The Untold Story
by enRAGEd
Summary: Request for Shakahnna. Every man has his price. For Barry Burton, the price is the safety of his family. But every man also has his limit, and when you start to push, how far is too far? Resident Evil 1, from Barry's perspective. Critique appreciated.
1. Chapter 1: Into The Dark

**A/N:** A request from my beloved Shakahnna. She gets most of my attention. She wanted a story of, and I quote: "Barry being awesome in Resident Evil 1". And so that's what I have tried to do. The original game from the perspective of Alpha Team's Weapon's Expert. Barry is a gentleman, as was made clear by his appearance in Mercenaries Reunion (filler though it may be). As such, I think he deserves more love. There is a lot to be said for any character who has as much to lose as Barry does, who still makes the right choice in the end. For this reason, I feel he's one of, if not the, most underappreciated character in the series. I've changed up a couple of bits and pieces. I didn't just want this story to be a rehash of the game. But you'll see what I mean when you read the story. More to come, hopefully soon. Enjoy.

**Chapter One: Into The Dark**

Barry Burton stepped out of his S.U.V, locked up and pocketed the keys. The street was dark. Dozens of cars were parked, all in shadow. Any one of them could have been the men watching his house, watching his _family_. He didn't bother looking for them anymore. Either they were too good, or he was getting too old. Whichever it was, he hadn't found them yet.

He sighed, set his elbows on the roof of the car and buried his head in his hands. He felt washed out, his body exhausted, his mind spent.

He let the cold knife twist in his guts, hoping he'd get through the worst of it before he went inside. With any luck, Sarah wouldn't be able to notice how frazzled he looked. He imagined she thought the stress was getting to him. In a way, she was right. Not that she knew the half of it, nor could he ever say.

He walked up the path towards their little house in the suburbs, the one they had almost paid off. His shoulders were slumped, weighed down beneath the combined burden of guilt and weariness. But he could hear Moira and Polly laughing inside. By the time he reached the door, he was smiling, in spite of himself.

He let himself in, and called for them. They didn't answer, just kept giggling. He walked into the lounge. It had been a long day and all he wanted now was to see his family.

He stopped dead on the threshold.

"Barry," Albert Wesker greeted with a nod. He was sitting in the leather recliner opposite the fireplace - _his _leather recliner - right leg crossed over his left, hands arched in front of his face.

Barry's jaw locked. His fists clenched. He started to march forward, and then he staggered as two small bodies threw themselves at his legs. Moira and Polly snuggled into his knees, calling for "daddy", kicking over their Chutes 'n' Ladders board in their haste to waylay him. He froze, reaching down to ruffle their hair, his eyes still locked on Wesker.

Sarah came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray of drinks. They detached themselves from his knees and ran to her. "You're just in time, Barry," she said, her voice soft and her smile warm, "dinner's ready. Albert said to expect you back about now. He said you were taking care of a few things at the station."

"Yeah, just a few things," he replied, feigning his best affable smile and scratching the back of his head, "nothing important."

"You're far too modest, Barry," Wesker said, twisting the knife, "your work at the R.P.D is nothing short of vital."

"Are you staying to eat, Albert?"

The question hung in the air. Barry had a premonition of an entire evening spent faking pleasantries with a man he despised.

"Unfortunately, no," he told her, rising from his seat, "there are a few things that require _my_ attention as well."

"Maybe some other time then," Barry said, suppressing a sigh of relief, "I'll see you out."

The two men walked to the door, the blond in the lead, his older, greyer counterpart following close behind.

"You could learn something from those two charming daughters of yours, Barry," the other man said, as they walked, "they know they need to play by the rules, regardless of the game."

"You don't need to tell me that. I've done _everything_ you've asked, no matter how wrong it was. Why the hell are you even here?"

"You planted the audio surveillance device, as I requested?"

"Attached it to the radio in Bravo's chopper, yeah," he grunted, "and don't act like you gave me a choice."

Wesker smirked, but the expression was devoid of humour. "Then our part in this charade will be coming to an end, tomorrow night."

"You mean they've found someone to take care of it?"

"In a manner of speaking. Alpha Team will be dispatched at zero hundred hours. My orders are to dispose of the mansion and all evidence relating to Umbrella's illegal activities. I'll need your assistance to keep the others distracted."

"Now hang on just a minute," Barry growled, keeping his voice low with all his effort, "it's kinda hard to play by the rules when _you _keep changing them."

"I _have_ my orders. Soon, this ordeal will be over. Whether your family will be alive to see that moment is your choice."

"Get out." He pulled the door open. "Get out of my house. _Now_."

"Give my regards to Sarah," Wesker replied, bowing his head in a poor impression of a gentleman. Then, he stepped out of the house and into the cool night air. It took all of Barry's composure not to slam the door, and a further effort of will not to run after the man and strangle him.

He returned to the lounge, deflated, defeated. He flopped into the seat where he had found the blond only a few minutes ago. Moira deposited herself on his lap and Polly sat at his feet, both drinking lemonade. After a few moments, his wife came in from the kitchen and sat down on the arm of the chair, leaning over to press a soft kiss to his creased forehead.

This was what he was fighting for, what he was lying and stealing and cheating for. Maybe he deserved to die for what he had done. Maybe, if there'd only been his life to threaten, he'd have refused Wesker. But his family _didn't_ deserve it, and his life _wasn't_ the only one. Whatever happened, he had to keep them safe. They were everything that was good in him, everything that was best to him in the world, and he couldn't see any harm come to them.

He only hoped that God - and his friends - could forgive him, or at least understand.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next day was nothing but dread. He knew that Wesker's warning about the mission would turn out to be correct. He would be heading out to the Arklay forest and the mysterious mansion deep within that very evening. He wanted to equip the team for the dangers ahead, but he couldn't approach any of them - not Chris, not Jill, not Joseph or Brad - for fear of word getting back to Wesker. His family would pay the price for his incaution.

Instead, he equipped himself, hoping he'd be able to protect them. He readied Miranda, the .44 Colt Python he'd been customising over the last year and a half. He finished her up in three hours flat, in his workshop back at the house. It was inspired work, better than anything he'd done in the past. Part of him - an almost childlike enthusiasm - couldn't wait to try it out. The rest of him knew that there wasn't any room to fool around.

When it came to helping the guys, his mind ran to various possibilities, but on such short notice, he'd have struggled to arrange an N.R.A meeting in a gun shop. He spoke to Robert Kendo - a friend and local smith - about putting together some custom Berettas for the team, but in less than twenty-four hours that was impossible.

In the end, the only worthwhile kit he could scrounge together was an old museum piece he'd been refitting for a buddy at the Association. It was a multi-barrelled rocket launcher that made the grenade gun toted by team sniper Forest Speyer look like the Fourth of July. Sarah had always hated having it around, even more so than the rest of the guns he worked on. Something capable of wreaking that much havoc, she argued, wasn't for the house. He decided to give her what she'd been asking for all that time, and bundled it into a holdall to take to the precinct.

The Ennerdale Street Station was in an uproar. STARS Bravo Team hadn't returned from their recon mission into the forest. When he heard the news, he felt a familiar chill awaken, shuddering down his spine. He'd been feeling it more and more, ever since Wesker had first brought him in on the conspiracy three months ago.

He went up to the helipad where the rest of his own unit were suiting up. They were all talking about their missing colleagues. The only thing he could offer to the conversation was a guilty silence.

He had known Captain Marini for many years. He had worked with the man in the formation of Raccoon's STARS team. He'd met the other Bravos too, and liked them. That just made the situation worse. Now they were lost and he felt, with a stark certainty, that it had something to do with Wesker's device.

The Captain himself was saying nothing. He mustered the team and gave them their orders: sweep the forest in search of Bravo Team and their transport. No mention of the mansion, the cannibals or any suggestion of the secret mission he'd been tasked with. Barry started to wonder how he was planning on slipping away to complete such an elaborate plan without anyone noticing. Especially if he was masking it as a simple search and rescue mission.

He tucked his holdall away beneath the co-pilot's chair. Brad shot him a confused look, but he ignored it. He'd learned a few months ago that the best way to avoid suspicion was to act like you weren't doing anything wrong. Part of him was ashamed to know that.

He climbed into the rear compartment, seating himself beside Joseph, and opposite the lovers, Chris and Jill. He'd known the latter pair the longest. They were old friends. Hell, he'd helped Chris get started in law enforcement. Only his family meant more to him than those two. He never would have thought he'd be selling out one to save the other in a million years. Live and learn.

He put a hand to his head, massaging away the beginnings of a migraine that was settling in the front of his brain. Tonight was going to be a long night, but at least, by the morning, it would all be over.

"You okay, man?" Chris asked. He glanced over to see two young faces, both strained with concern, looking back at him.

"Yeah," he lied, "I'm just fine."

-x-x-x-x-x-

"A new sidearm, Barry," Wesker observed. He glanced up from loading the revolver. "Heavily modified, if I'm not mistaken. Expecting trouble?"

Chris snapped a magazine into his Beretta, grinning around the loose bullet clasped between his teeth. "You never heard the old Boy Scout motto, Captain?" he asked, spitting out the spare round and thumbing it into the breach, "be prepared."

"And good old Barry's nothing if not a Boy Scout," Jill added.

He looked at her, askance. She was watching him, eyes intent, like she was rifling through his thoughts. How much did she know? And if she didn't know anything, how long before she put all the pieces together? Being around her made him feel uncomfortable, and had done since this whole sorry saga had begun. If anyone was going to figure him out, it would be her. He just hoped she figured Wesker out before that happened.

He finished up pushing brass into the chambers and flipped the gun shut. Brad brought the chopper down in a clearing a few hundred metres from where they'd spotted Bravo's transport. It was the closest he'd managed to get with the dense forest all around.

"Okay, good luck out there, guys," the pilot said, as the rotors wound down, "I'll keep the bird ready to fly, just in case."

They disembarked, boots thumping into the sodden leaves carpeting the dirt floor. It was a warm night. He started sweating the moment he clambered out. An insect choir chirped without rhythm in the silence left by the dying engines.

Joseph took the lead, torch beam slicing through the darkness as he swept his shotgun across the path ahead. A plume of smoke rose out of the canopy and across the night sky like a grey scar, giving them direction. Jill and Chris followed, each gripping a 9mm and a flashlight.

Barry gestured for Wesker to go ahead. He didn't want the other man behind him at any point. When the Captain obliged without argument, he felt a stab of suspicion.

They'd only been walking for a couple of minutes when he heard raised voices up ahead. For a moment, he dared to hope that they'd found Bravo. He arrived just in time to see Joseph throwing up at the base of a tree, and Chris with his hand on the younger man's back.

The helicopter was a mess. Rotors were bent. Struts were buckled. The tail had wrapped around a tree during the crash, tearing open the metal at its rear like a twisted soda can. The acrid stink of fuel hung around the site, blending with the smoke rising from the burnt out electrics.

Wesker approached Jill, who was stepping out of the passenger compartment. "Status report."

"Derelict," she replied, her face pale, "except for Kevin. He's ... he's dead, sir."

Sharp pain blossomed in Barry's chest. He rubbed his hand over his heart, trying to massage it away.

Jill looked stricken, even with her usual restraint in place. He'd never been able to fault her professionalism and he couldn't now, either. But even compared to her, their leader was a picture of composure. Or indifference.

"The crash?"

"No, sir. It looks like he was killed by an animal. The wounds aren't consistent with any of the other bodies in this case either. Maybe a dog."

"I see."

"We need to find Bravo Team and get the hell out of this forest," Chris said as he joined them, before he realised that he was addressing his superior as well, "sir."

"Agreed," he replied, "I want you all to spread out and search for any signs of our missing personnel. Stay in sight. I don't want anyone separated from the group."

There was a chorus of agreements. Barry's was a subdued murmur at the back of his throat. He'd have been surprised if anyone heard it.

They fanned out. Chris and Jill took the right flank. Joseph took the middle. That left him and Wesker with the left. He kept one eye on Joe, the other on the Captain.

The forest loomed up between them. In no time at all, he was alone, relying on the rustling of boots stomping through the undergrowth to keep track of the others.

A moment later, Wesker dropped off his radar. The sweat on his back turned cold.

Then his jaw clenched. He wasn't going to let the other man just sneak away. If he was going to be an accomplice in this, he at least wanted to know what part he was expected to play.

He changed direction, shoving aside branches and kicking through shrubs, chasing Wesker.

He found him standing in a small clearing, features lit by the glow of a handheld device resting in his palm.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, without looking up.

"What are you doing?"

"Now is hardly the time for paranoia. Shouldn't you be watching your colleagues?"

Barry growled. He started to say something rash. Gunshots cut him short. It took him a second to realise what he was hearing: the explosive bark of a shotgun.

He took off at a sprint, circling trees, ducking low limbs, cursing when briars and nettles snagged around his ankles. His heart hammered heavy in his chest. He was out of breath in seconds. He could hear voices now - pained screams and frightened yelling. The shotgun was still firing, a pistol too, roaring and cracking somewhere beyond the trees. Behind it all, he could hear something else, something new. It sounded like a dog, lots of dogs, barking, baying, howling for blood.

Wesker overtook him. He was younger, fitter. In fact, he was in better shape in his late thirties than Barry had ever been. He cursed and kept running. His knuckles whitened around Miranda.

He heard the Captain's Beretta coughing ahead, heard him yelling for Chris and Jill to move. It should have been him. He didn't care about playing the hero, but they were _his_ friends. He should have been there for them. Instead it was Wesker, picking up his slack.

The others bolted out of the gloom. Jill was in the lead. The front of her tactical vest was sticky with gore, and her beret was loose from where she had jammed it back onto her head in a hurry. She was holding her sidearm in one hand and Joseph's spent shotgun in the other. There was no sign of Joe himself.

Chris followed her, dirty from a tumble in the soil, yelling for her to run. It didn't take Barry long to see why.

Wesker doubled back, ordering a retreat as he pumped lead into the shadows. A second later, a shape lunged after him, powering forward on four limbs, growling low in its throat.

It looked like a Doberman, a beast of a dog, all dark fur, heavy muscle and teeth. Lots and lots of teeth.

It leapt at him. It snarled through a maw slick with spittle and caked in blood. He'd never heard any creature make a noise like that, but he knew what it meant. It was going to kill him. It was going to rip him to pieces. It was going to tear his flesh from his bones and swallow it down.

His heart seized, terror consuming. Instinct shunted his addled brain out of the driver's seat.

Miranda barked. Its .44 calibre bite ripped the animal open along its flank, blowing its ribcage to pieces. Steaming entrails slithered out, a rubbery tether playing out behind it like it was unravelling. Its momentum carried it for a few more feet, and then its legs buckled. It crashed onto its snout and slid to a halt amid the leaves, its dying breath escaping in a whimper.

He was running before it even stopped moving. In his head, he saw exposed sinew bulging from the skin and glistening in torchlight, fur matted with filth and mould sloughing away from flesh, holes punched in muscle by shot. He'd only caught half a glimpse, but he was certain. That dog had been dead long before he'd put it down for good.

He could see his comrades turning to shoot at their pursuers. He heard their bullets smack into flesh, wet explosions that drew yelps of pain and frustration from the pack. But they weren't letting up. They were so close that he could almost smell the blood on their breath.

He spun, the Colt bucking in his hands as he filleted another dog. It tumbled away into the long grass in an explosion of red. The others leapt over its corpse, undeterred.

Buzzing filled the air, drowning out the animals, even deafening him to his own laboured breathing and the pounding of his heart. Chris started screaming curses at the heavens, and then the helicopter roared overhead. Brad had bugged out. Maybe the chopper had been attacked, or he'd just turned chicken. Either way, they were on their own now.

"That building! Move!"

Wesker's order spurred them on, but they weren't operating on command anymore. They weren't laying down a suppressing fire. There was no discipline, no coordination. This was a full-on rout, a mad, desperate scramble to safety, wherever that might be. With the chopper gone, any direction was as good as the rest, so long as it got them away from the dogs. They plunged, blind and breathless, through the forest, and hoped. It was all they had.

He saw the building loom out of the darkness, rising over the trees. It was a mansion. Unless he was mistaken, it was the same mansion Wesker had been sent to find and destroy. The place where all this had started. Fear twisted his guts. For better or worse, this would be where it ended too.

There wasn't any time for second thoughts. He kept running.

Chris and Jill hit the doors first, bursting into the grand entrance hall. Wesker was next, leaving only Barry outside in the dark. His legs were aching, his lungs burning. He hadn't realised how out of shape he'd gotten those past few years.

Jill waved him on, silent prayers spilling from her lips as she fought to catch her breath. Chris was yelling for him to hurry, voice frantic. Wesker looked on, ambivalent.

He threw himself over the threshold, dropping to his hands and knees on the carpeted floor. His comrades slammed the entrance shut behind him, and Jill wedged the shotgun through its handles. They jumped back as a canine body slammed against the door, and then a dozen paws started to scrabble against the oak. Even if the meal had escaped, the hunger remained.

The dogs moaned and barked and snarled, driven into a frenzy by the fresh kill they'd claimed. Barry shot a rueful glance at the shotgun barring the door and the bloody handprint encircling its grip.

He felt the tightness clamp around his heart again.

-x-x-x-x-x-


	2. Chapter 2: Feast of the Damned

**Chapter Two: Feast of the Damned**

Chris slammed a fist against the doors. Outside, the dogs kept barking, their clawed feet gouging chunks out of the oak. "What the _hell_ happened out there?"

No one answered. Jill was leaning against the wall, fanning herself with her beret. She had that far away look in her eyes, like she was reliving the chase, or the events before it. Wesker, ever the professional, was scanning their surroundings. Maybe to the others it looked like he was keeping himself occupied, dealing with the tragedy in his own way, but Barry knew better.

For his part, he was just trying to breathe. The run to the mansion had taken more out of him than it should have. But then, he was supposed to be retired by now. That was why he'd moved to Raccoon City in the first place. Instead, they'd roped him in for one last case, and he was stuck playing stooge to a corporate spy. He should have been curled up in bed next to his wife right then, his daughters sleeping in the next room.

_Sarah. Moira. Polly. It's for them. Remember that._

"Why wasn't anyone watching Joseph?" Chris asked, kicking the wall with enough force to make the sideboard splinter, "how did those things get around us like that?"

Even as he fought to catch his wind, he felt a trickle of ice water roll along his spine. They'd know it was him who'd let the team down. Of course, he couldn't deny it. He'd broken rank to go chasing after their supposed leader. He owned the blame for what had happened to Joe.

And of course, Wesker would cover his own ass. What could Barry say against him? What could he say that wouldn't bring the other man's wrath upon his two oldest friends?

"It wasn't anyone's fault, Chris," Jill said. Barry disguised a sigh of relief as a heavy gasp for breath. "He wasn't keeping pace with the rest of us and he got separated. By the time I caught up to him, it was already too late."

Chris's fist bounced off the wall, rattling a painting. "First Kevin, now Joseph. This mission's jinxed. And still no sign of Bravo Team."

"I wouldn't be so certain," Wesker said. Everyone else turned to look at him. "There was a mansion in the Arklay foothills that Enrico believed might be a potential base of operations for the perpetrators. This could be it."

The team took their first real look at the décor. Thick, scarlet carpeting ran from the doors to the staircase opposite, which rose, split and curved to meet a balcony that overlooked the front entrance. Tiles hewn and laid by expert hands covered the floor, shimmering in the light from a dozen ornate candelabras and the grand chandelier suspended above. Framed oil paintings and oak furnishings added extra lavish touches.

The last time Barry had seen a place this impressive had been on his wedding day. But the church had been a couple of rooms. From the outside, this building had looked huge. If all the rooms were furnished like this one, it would have cost millions.

Jill broke the silence first. The incredulity in her voice spoke for them all. "_This_ is the Spencer Mansion? I thought the report said this place was abandoned and condemned."

"Abandoned," Chris grunted, "right."

Wesker nodded. "This building clearly has its secrets. Bravo Team may well be here, but so could our suspects. Before we decide on a plan of action, I want everyone to check their equipment."

The team rifled through packs and pockets as one, counting up what meagre reserves of ammunition they had left. Chris and Jill had whittled three clips each to two between them. Wesker gave them both a magazine, bringing the three of them level. Barry reloaded Miranda. He still had three auto-loaders and a handful of loose bullets. More to the point, every one was a kill shot.

"I counted six, maybe seven clean shots back there, and they just got right back up," Chris said, readying his Beretta, "and when you showed up they were dropping like flies. Good job you brought that cannon after all."

On top of the sidearms, Chris was also carrying a combat knife in a sheath on his shoulder. Jill had a compact tazer, the kind women kept in their bag next to their lipstick and purse. Knowing her, she didn't own any of the other items. And, knowing her, she'd taken that tazer apart at some point, made it "better". He was more wary of it than Chris's blade.

"I trust you completed the requisite paperwork for that weapon," Wesker said, "it doesn't look like a standard police issue."

"Sure." Jill nodded, a slight smile touching the corners of her lips. "Just ask my Captain back in Chicago."

Maybe she thought Wesker wasn't being serious. If so, she was wrong. Barry knew he had a stick up his ass. The rules were the rules. It didn't matter that he was against everything STARS stood for. He crossed every T and dotted every I, not because he believed in anything, but because it was how things were done. It hadn't been difficult for him to live up to his falsified reputation.

It felt like he was the only one who saw the other man for what he was. Chris revered him as everything a cop should be. Jill thought he was a credit to their unit and the force in general. Only he knew the truth. Wesker was no good.

"We'll begin on the ground floor," the Captain said, once they had taken stock, "Barry. Jill. The two of you search the east wing. Chris and I will search the west. This hall can serve as our staging area and regroup point."

"Sir, should we really be splitting up?" Jill asked, "this place could be just as dangerous as outside."

Chris nodded, and Barry agreed, but kept the opinion to himself. It wouldn't help. If Wesker wanted them separated, nothing anyone said or did would dissuade him.

"Then it's imperative we find Bravo Team as quickly as possible, while we still have a chance of finding them alive."

His logic was sound. His motives were bull shit though.

Chris and Jill locked eyes. Barry had been accused of being dense a few times in the past. In fact, Sarah had noticed that the two were a couple months before he had. At that moment, he'd have had trouble missing it. They wanted to stay together. That much was obvious.

They weren't alone. Barry had hoped to keep tabs on Wesker, and make sure neither of his friends stumbled into any danger wandering around the potential death trap of a mansion.

There was nothing any of them could do. The Captain had spoken.

"Be safe," Chris said, looking first at his girlfriend, then at Barry.

Jill nodded. "You too."

They took a position on either side of the door, weapons ready. He shot a rueful glance at their comrades, watching as Chris took the lead, letting Wesker cover his back. There was nothing he could do but hope that now wasn't the time for the Captain to make his move.

He and Jill took a handle each and entered the east wing. Two sidearms and four trained eyes scanned the interior. They'd entered a gallery of the same stunning opulence as the Main Hall, albeit much smaller. The impact was muted by the fact that they'd already been surprised by the decor once.

All the same, it was grandiose. Paintings in oils and water colours lined the walls, set in ornamental frames. Faces contorted into frowns glared out from the canvas, alongside dismal landscapes choked with cloud and rain. The centrepiece was a towering statue of a woman bearing an urn upon her shoulder. Spotlights lit her in different colours from different angles.

Barry jumped when the doors banged closed behind him. He let out a sigh when he realised that he'd been holding his breath.

"Barry, what happened out there?" Jill asked. He jumped again. She had startled him almost as much as the doors. "You were supposed to be on Joseph's left. Where did you go?"

Her voice was calm, toneless. It was a question, not an accusation. In fact, she sounded like she was musing on the subject, as though there were inconsistencies she was trying to resolve in her mind. No anger. No suspicion. Just thoughtfulness.

That made him feel more guilty. No matter what he said, he'd be deceiving someone who trusted him. He avoided her gaze, but that didn't matter. He could feel her eyes watching him. His face was burning, and for the first time that night he was glad to be so out of shape. The glow of exertion in his cheeks would disguise his shame.

"I ... thought I heard something." It was true. In a way. "Stopped to check it out. Only realised there was something wrong when I heard the shotgun."

She stared at him for a few moments longer, and then nodded. "Okay."

He wanted to tell her everything. Part of him was sure she'd believe him and even understand. He was desperate and hopeless, and she'd be able to make sense of it all and tell him what to do about it. She was a smart girl, smarter than him at any rate. Given time, she'd figure it out on her own anyway.

It was more than that, though. His silence might have been justified before, but people had died. Every death that followed would be on his head, so long as he said nothing.

But he couldn't do it. The moment Wesker suspected he'd told the others was the moment his family died. It'd make Jill and Chris targets too. He didn't see them just going along with the Captain's plan, not the way he had. If they made things more complicated for him, he'd probably just kill them both.

No. The less they knew the better. This was his mess, and he had to dig his own way out of it.

First chance he got, he was going to reckon with Wesker.

He just hoped it wouldn't be too late.

-x-x-x-x-x-

"Y'know, it'd probably be easier just to kick the damn thing down," Barry said.

Jill ignored him. Maybe she hadn't even heard him. Her attention was focused, her hands cupped around the keyhole, her fingers working thin wires inside the lock.

"Maybe," she replied, after about twenty seconds, "but I don't want to risk breaking the lock. Just in case we need to shut this door later."

"You mean, in case those dogs get inside the building?" he asked. She nodded, absently. He'd lost her again.

He kept still and quiet for a few moments, before restlessness got the better of him again.

"Where'd you learn to do this, anyway?"

That same twenty second delay. "Night school. I took a locksmith course. Seemed like it might be useful. It's pretty easy once you know how. I'm pretty sure you'd pick it up in no time."

He couldn't tell if she was joking or not. Either way, the idea of Barry Burton picking locks sounded pretty funny to him. "I think this dog's a little too old to learn any new tricks." He ran a hand rough with calluses along Miranda's chrome finish. "I'll stick with what I know."

Jill gave a snort. "Come on. All you need is a steady hand and an eye for detail, and I _know _you have both. Or did that revolver put itself together? Besides, you could use a little subtlety in your repertoire. Now get down here."

She reached down to pat the floor beside her, holding the twin pins with her other hand. He rolled his eyes and sighed, before sliding his revolver onto his hip and doing as he was told. His knees creaked as he lowered himself to the floor. He hoped she appreciated this.

He stared at the keyhole, already lost. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Take hold of this," she said, guiding his hand to one of the pins and letting him pry it out of her grip, "and turn it until you hear the click. Careful to keep it steady or you'll lose it."

He nodded, keeping the pick pinched between his fingers. He could feel it strain against the weight of the mechanism as he twisted it. He seemed to be doing it right, not that he could tell. It was pure beginner's luck. Jill would know if he screwed up.

It was hard to believe they'd been running from rabid dogs mere minutes ago. She was so composed now, her breathing level, her shakes under control. He hadn't even managed to rid himself of the scratchy tightness that had settled in his chest yet. He admired her, and not the grudging admiration he showed Wesker either.

Barry knew he was past his prime, but she hadn't even peaked yet. She was already a great cop. Some day she'd be one of the best.

If she survived the night.

The pick came away with a dull clunk. Jill sighed. Her head flopped forward. That hadn't been the click she'd been listening for.

He grunted, letting her slip the tool from his hand. "Damn it."

"Don't worry about it," she said, "wanna try again?"

"Thanks, but I think I'd rather leave this to the master."

"Never hurts to add another string to your bow." She brushed a clutch of errant chestnut strands out of her face and tucked them under her beret. "But suit yourself."

She went back to work. He left her to it this time, figuring he'd disrupted her, and the search, enough already.

It was less than a minute before the lock popped open. Jill sat back on her haunches, wiping the sweat off her forehead. She started to pack her tools away, but he wasn't paying attention.

"You hear that?" he asked.

She glanced back at him and shook her head. That was when he heard it again, a muffled thump he couldn't place. It sounded like it was coming from the next room. She rose to her feet, slipping her Beretta free from its holster. He stepped past her, towards a tapestry hanging in the corner of the gallery. The crimson weave didn't fit with the blue decor. He was certain that meant something.

He gripped an edge and pulled it aside. There was a corridor behind it. It was dark, but not black. An old oil lamp bolted to the wall painted the passage with soft, flickering radiance. It stank, but it wasn't the musty smell of disuse. Instead, the stench hit him like a jab to the nose. His empty stomach somersaulted, a swell of nausea rising in his throat.

He knew that smell. It had filled the houses of the victims of the cannibal killers. It had risen out of the dogs he'd split from head to tail, as they'd laid in the grass like ripped trash bags spilling their rotten guts. And now it was here, suffocating in strength, enough to make him gag.

Jill grunted in disgust, her face creasing as the wave hit her too. He could see her left hand twitching as she struggled against the impulse to smother her nose and mouth. She took the lead as he drew Miranda and thumbed back the hammer.

They walked deeper into the niche. He let the curtain fall closed behind them. The dim light closed in around them. Everything was fuzzy edges and vague shapes. Ahead and around the corner, something moved. The silence split with a wet tear, followed by a slurping, sucking sound.

Barry shuddered. This felt wrong. Nothing good lurked in the dark. Every instinct screamed for him to run. He just wished there was somewhere to run to.

There was a silhouette hunched over on the floor. His adjusting eyes picked out details in the gloom, a ragged jacket, a hairless scalp. The crunch and squelch of teeth on meat accompanied every bob of its head. The figure was gnawing on something with slow, ponderous movements, ripping away flesh and swallowing it down. Part of him wished he'd stayed blinded by the darkness.

It heard them coming, heard their feet thumping on the floorboards. It groaned, its throat clogged with blood that bubbled into its mouth. Then it turned its head, white eyeballs swivelling in their sockets to stare right at him. It gurgled again. A stream of gore poured down its front.

It stood up, lifting its hands towards them, a moan, plaintive and wordless, pushing from its lips like a laboured breath. The sight of it, emaciated, filthy, _rotting_, was more than he could stand. He froze, his revolver held out in front of him like a shield. If he couldn't pull the trigger it was useless. He knew that, even as the man, the thing, started to stagger towards him. But fear had taken over.

"Hey, hold it right there!"

Jill's voice cut through the ice. His heart started pumping again, melting away the rest.

"I said hold it!" she barked.

It didn't listen. It lunged at them, mouth falling open, fingers curving into claws poised to bunch in their clothing and sink under their skin. Her Beretta coughed. The bullet punched a hole in its shoulder. It flinched, but from the impact, not the pain. A second later, it came for them again, undeterred, not even favouring its damaged arm. That was why Barry preferred a gun with real stopping power. The Colt Python bucked in his hands.

The .44 slug hit it in the chest. Liquefied organs erupted from its back, mottling the walls crimson. The force threw it off its feet and sent it skidding along the bare boards. It left a bloody smear in its wake, before it slid to a stop. Then, it let out one last rasp and fell limp. Or as limp as something stiff with rigor mortis got.

Jill stepped towards the corpse. She kept her sidearm centred on it as she tapped it with her boot.

"Barry, this guy's been dead for weeks," she said.

It was true. Its skin was dried out and peeling like ancient wallpaper, and splitting at the joints. And the reek rising off it couldn't have been anything other than the stench of death. So how had it been walking around?

_He said they'd all be dead. All the ones infected by whatever they'd been working on in this hole in the ground._

He'd been wrong. This one hadn't been dead. Maybe the others he'd mentioned wouldn't be dead either. Was this what Umbrella had been working on? Something to bring back the dead? He swallowed hard. What kind of place had Wesker dragged them into? Was this operation even within his control anymore? Or was he just as helpless as the rest of them now?

"I think we've found our killers," he said, as Jill walked deeper into the passage, leaving him to watch the cadaver.

He watched her stoop over the dark outline of whatever it had been feeding on. He couldn't see it at that distance, but he heard her swear. She rolled it over. A human hand flopped out of the gloom. A hand clutching a Beretta, just like the one she was holding.

She looked back at him, features grim. "I think we found Bravo Team too."

-x-x-x-x-x-


	3. Chapter 3: The Dead and Deceived

**Chapter Three: The Dead and Deceived**

It was Kenneth Sullivan, Sully, they found in that passage, soaked in blood and ripped to shreds by his killer. His jacket had been torn away and chunks of flesh had been gouged from his bones with teeth and fingers. Jill slid his eyes closed and told Barry to stand watch at the curtain. Then she started rifling through their fallen comrade's pockets, looking for ammo for her Beretta.

He didn't think anyone, or anything, would stumble over them while she worked. Maybe she just didn't want him watching while she looted a corpse. A friend, no less. Either way, he didn't object. He just took his place at the entrance to the gallery and waited.

He tried to think of what he was going to say to Wesker when he found him. He wanted to get the conversation straight in his head. The Captain could talk rings around him, and he didn't want to give him that chance.

But he couldn't shake the thought that Joseph, Kenneth, and maybe even the rest of Bravo Team, were dead because of him. His throat was tight, on the verge of nausea. His body was quivering with adrenaline. His guts felt like they were twisting and balling up inside him.

Maybe he was in shock.

_I can't take this._

"Barry?"

Jill was back with him. He closed his eyes, trying to reign in his runaway body before it gave the game away.

_Remember who you're doing this for. Remember what happens if you screw up._

"Find anything?"

Somehow, he'd managed to push the tremble out of his voice. Success bred confidence. He turned to face her.

"Just a couple of clips," she said, patting the equipment pouch resting on her hip, "are you ready to move?"

He nodded. The sooner they got out of that gallery, the sooner he could forget about Kenneth lying in a gory heap, his ribcage glistening beneath tattered meat, his mouth hanging slack and filled with blood.

He winced. Maybe he'd never forget that image. Some things men took to the grave. He knew that all too well.

Jill took the door handle. He stood to the side, gun in hand. On her cue, he darted into the next room, eyes flitting left and right, searching for hostiles. The corridor was empty. Not just that, it was bland, at least by comparison with the parts of the mansion they'd seen thus far. The walls were clean and plain, lined with stout cabinets filled with china plates. Nothing more provocative than that.

In truth, he preferred it.

He moved ahead. Jill followed close behind. He wanted to keep himself, and Miranda, between her and any threats. Whatever else might have been lurking in that building, his .44 was the best chance they had of surviving it. And he owed her something. Chris too.

Right then, he'd have given just about anything to know that the other man was alive and well. Instead, all he knew was that he was wandering through hostile territory, with an enemy he thought was a friend watching his back. That wasn't an encouraging thought.

Glass fractured. He wheeled away from the window. A shadow vanished into the darkness beyond the pane, leaving a spider web of cracks at the centre of a bloody spatter. A thousand needles prickled along his arms, adrenaline making his hair rise. He just tried to breathe, to quiet his thundering heart and quell the ache in his chest.

Jill was next to him, Beretta raised.

"We need to get out of here," she said, moving ahead, "now."

He could hear barking. The dogs were circling the house, looking for a way in. She was right. They had to get out of that corridor.

She was ahead of him, barely a dozen metres between them, when one of the windows shattered. A sinewy, four-legged body covered in matted, bloody fur landed in front of him, skidding on the tiles. It started barking, jaws snapping, each thunderous blast of noise making his ears pop. He levelled Miranda. One bullet would pulp the dog and give him a clear run to his partner.

Another pane exploded, pelting him with glass. He covered his head with his arm, diving to the side as a second animal landed in the hallway. It leapt at him, maw wide and drooling. He swung for it, blind and wild. His gun slammed into the side of its head and threw it to the ground.

He looked back to his partner. She was coming for him, her pistol trained on the dogs.

"Jill, don't!" he yelled, "just run."

He stamped on the first dog's crown as it made a lunge for his ankle. Then he turned and ran. He could hear more glass breaking, more growling and barking filling the passage. Jill's gun spat death as she made her retreat. He did the same, racing back to the gallery door.

He wrenched it open and dove inside, then threw it back in the face of the closest animal. It bounced off its head and started to swing open again. He cursed and threw his bulk against it. A blood-soaked snout caught in the door. Its vicious snarl transformed into a shriek of pain. He slammed the butt of his revolver on its nose and it retreated, whining. With one final shunt, he forced the door shut and collapsed against it, panting for breath.

All he could hear from the other side was scratching and barking. No shooting from Jill. That meant she'd made it out already.

He didn't want to think about the alternative.

He stepped away from the door. It rattled, but stuck in place. She'd been right. If he'd forced it, he might not have been able to keep them out while he caught his wind.

_Guess that's another one I owe you, Jill. Just hope we both live long enough for you to cash in._

-x-x-x-x-x-

The dogs had given up on the front entrance. The place was silent, save the distant howling of feral beasts. He wasn't stopping for the ambience. He had to regroup with Jill. He was certain there'd be a way around on the second floor.

He was halfway up the stairs when a gunshot cut through the hush. He froze, his foot hovering above the next step. The noise had come from the west wing, the same door that Wesker and Chris had used. A moment later, the gun barked again in confirmation.

"Shit."

He flew back down the staircase and sprinted to the door. He threw it open and levelled his revolver, searching for the threat.

Wesker was standing in what looked like a Dining Room, over the body of another zombie. It had crumpled to the floor after his first shot. The second had been a coup de grace to the back of the skull, pureeing its brain.

Its filth-caked clothing and bloody hands reminded him of the thing that killed Kenneth. No matter how hard he tried to forget.

The Captain turned and acknowledged him with a nod. "Barry."

He looked back to his victim. Barry growled. His knuckles turned white around Miranda. The _thing_ might have been dead, but there was still a monster in the room.

_Now. You wanted answers. Now's the time. Make that son of a bitch sing._

He jabbed the barrel of the pistol into the back of the other man's head. Wesker froze, his every muscle going rigid. Barry's mouth ran dry.

_This is a mistake._

"I want answers."

He eased forward the hammer on the gun and then snapped it back again. That noise, that rattling click of precision-crafted parts settling into place, had power. It was a threat. A promise of readiness. A warning that he was only a pull of the trigger away from death. Men crumbled when they heard that noise.

But not Wesker.

His finger hadn't even been on the trigger. It had been a bluff. A stupid, panicked attempt to regain control of his life. The Captain spun around. Barry felt him catch his wrist, lock his index finger, and twist the gun out of his grip. Then he was face-down against the table, Wesker's palm on the back of his head.

"That was ill-advised."

He grunted, trying to force the other man off. It was no use. He was pinned. "What's going on here? You said they'd all be dead by now. You said no one else would have to die!"

Wesker said nothing for a few moments. Barry knew he was looking for the right lie. But just knowing he was lying didn't get him any closer to the truth.

"I underestimated T's capacity for prolonging the lives of its victims."

"Sully was killed by one of those things. That blood's on _your_ hands."

Pain shot up his arm, cutting through his indignation, as the blond adjusted his grip. He didn't even seem to be exerting himself. Barry's face started to burn with the shame. Was Wesker just that good? Or was he _really_ that out of shape?

"Don't test my patience, Barry."

"Where's Chris?"

"We encountered a member of Bravo Team. There was a ... misunderstanding. I ordered him to remain with her until his temporary blindness could be treated. Fortunate. His presence was an inconvenience."

"I'll bet."

"Can I trust that you've regained your senses?"

"Fine, just let me up."

The hold around his arm loosened. He pulled it into his body, massaging muscles that throbbed and joints that were stiff with swelling. Wesker adjusted his sunglasses, as though the rebellion had been nothing but a minor inconvenience.

Barry growled. Here they were, fighting for their lives, and he was acting so goddamn casual. At least anger would have been something. A glimmer of humanity, no matter how slight.

"We have a complication."

Wesker spun the revolver in his hand and returned it to him, grip-first. He tried to take it, but the blond held it tight, locking eyes with him, features stern. When he let it go, it snapped back, the corner jabbing him in the ribs. He winced.

"Another one, huh?" he grunted.

"The custodians of this installation had strict protocols to follow. All sensitive information concerning Umbrella's activities should have been disposed of."

"Let me guess. They dropped the ball, right?"

"I've recovered several documents already, but I'll wager there are more in the east wing and the second building behind the mansion. It's in our best interests to keep those documents out of the hands of our colleagues."

"Because if they learn too much, it'll make them a target too. Yeah, I understand."

"Then I can count on your cooperation?"

He put his head in his hands and blew out a breath. He felt tired, not just in body, but in mind. Maybe weary was the word. He'd have given anything to have the night over with.

All he could do was stick to the plan. Protect his family. Try to keep the others safe. If that meant playing the stooge for a while longer, so be it.

"Whatever you say."

Wesker nodded. "This ordeal will be over soon enough, Barry. Then we can put this whole sordid affair behind us. Don't jeopardise what we've worked for these past months, so close to the end."

-x-x-x-x-x-

There were two doors on the Main Hall's upper east side. He still hadn't quite nailed the geography yet. Still, if he was going to find Jill and the documents Wesker had mentioned, he had to be a fast learner. He picked a door and entered, for better or worse.

The corridor that followed was dark. A warm breeze was filtering in from some unseen aperture ahead. He groped for a light switch. Instead, his fingers brushed a sticky patch on the wall and he recoiled. Even in the dim light, he could make out the stain. He knew it was blood.

And he could see more of it, a trail of gore daubed along the length of the passage.

A shudder ran down his back. In the absence of cold, he knew it had to be dread. He stumbled along the hall, squinting as he waited for his eyes to adjust. He found a doorway lit by a shaft of moonlight, felt the caress of the breeze again, and knew that he'd found a way outside.

Sure enough, as he groped around the frame, he found himself standing on a balcony overlooking the forest. The trees rustled as the wind rocked them back and forth. Their leaves glowed with silver light. In the distance, he could see a streak of grey rising into the sky.

How long had it been since they'd found Bravo's helicopter? He couldn't say, but it felt like an eternity already. And the night was only going to get longer.

He stepped out onto the balcony, following it around the outside of the mansion's second floor. However long the building had been abandoned, the ivy looked like it'd had the run of this place for longer. It was tangled around ornaments and statues, and lay like a thick, leafy carpet over the wrought iron gantry under his feet.

There'd been recent movement. Something had ripped up a path through the vines. Maybe the same thing that had smeared blood across the wall.

There was a skeletal awning over the section of walkway ahead, nothing but a frame. A weave of tendrils shrouded what lay beneath from the moonlight. The shadows there were impenetrable, and he was wary of limited visibility. He didn't want to stumble over a corpse, in case it tried to drag him down and eat him.

He took each step as slow as he could, keeping Miranda trained on the emptiness in front of him. If something jumped out at him, he'd be ready for it.

Or he thought he would be.

The world exploded in a flurry of panicked screams and a noise like overlapping peels of thunder. The darkness surged towards him. He cried out and fell on his backside amid the foliage as it rushed past him. Miranda roared as his finger tightened around her trigger, a spasm of terror taking hold. Feathers scattered everywhere as the crows took to wing and surged skywards. He held his breath as they flew away, only daring to release it once he was certain they weren't going to exact some kind of murderous revenge upon him.

Maybe not everything in that death trap mansion was out to kill him after all.

He pushed himself up, only realising how much his posterior was aching once he was vertical.

He froze when he saw the figure sitting slumped in the corner of the shaded area, where the birds had been gathered. It was dead. He could tell that straight away. The body was covered in small wounds where flesh had been picked from its bones by beak and claw. Ribbons of meat were hanging like loose threads from its arms. On its shoulder, a larger injury gaped, the size of a human mouth.

It wouldn't have been a fatal wound, if it hadn't been for the infection. The disease had killed the sorry son of a bitch stone dead, and then the carrion had descended to eat their fill.

But something else was wrong. Something beyond the obvious. The lank, dark hair. The tactical vest. The gun, like an oversized revolver, lying beside it.

It was Forest. Forest Speyer, Bravo Team's weapons specialist, was the dead man in front of him.

"Oh Jesus." His voice was trembling. This time he just let it.

He leaned in, praying that the resemblance was just a trick of the light. It wasn't. This was another colleague, another friend, dead. Murdered. Eaten.

His eyes had been scraped out. His lower lip had been ripped away. His cheeks had been pecked to tattered shreds. But it couldn't have been anyone but him. He recognised the American flag flying proud on the skin of his right bicep, even now that it had been unravelled.

It was Forest.

_He's not dead._

The realisation gripped him like cold fingers curling around the base of his spine. The ice rose up his back, freezing the sweat under his shirt. His body might have been slow on the uptake, but his mind was racing.

_The virus. It'll bring him back. __The first one of those things was_ falling apart_, for God's sake. There's no way those birds killed him._

His breath caught in his chest. His heart started to ache again. The hand holding his pistol was shaking, a cocktail of adrenaline and nerves turning his body to gelatine.

_It's on you now. Do it._

He cocked back the hammer. The noise made his gut flip-flop. Was he really doing this? Was he really pointing a .44 calibre revolver at a friend? Was this what his life had come to?

_You killed him. You owe him this._

A throb of pain rushed from his centre and down his arm, filling his fingertips with needles. He tightened his grip on the gun, feeling the barbs constrict under his skin.

He _had_ killed Forest. He'd hidden the truth that might have saved him. He'd sabotaged Bravo's helicopter and left him stranded in the building where he'd met his death.

And now he was going to turn into some kind of mindless _creature_. Unless _he_ did something about it.

The corpse breathed. Its head turned, rustling the leaves draped around its crown.

_Now!_

The pistol bucked in his hands. Forest's head snapped back. His skull burst. His brain turned to mist, staining the greenery red. His face collapsed, twisting and distorting like a crumpled Halloween mask. Blood poured from his lipless mouth. He didn't move again.

The echo of the gunshot rolled out over the flats beyond the mansion's walls. Only mournful howls answered.

Miranda slid out of his hands and clattered to the floor. He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat, forcing down bile. His eyes were stinging. He rubbed his palms into them, trying to make them stop. They watered under the pressure. He swallowed again. A noise, halfway between a grunt and a sob, escaped him.

He bent down and retrieved his gun, ignoring the dampness on his cheeks. The grenade launcher too. He grabbed it by its strap and hoisted it onto his shoulder.

He needed to get of there. He needed to get away from that body.

And he needed to find the rest of Alpha Team, before anyone else died.

-x-x-x-x-x-


	4. Chapter 4: An Internal Torment

**Chapter Four: ****An Internal Torment**

The second door on the main hall's upper level was more promising than the first. There were no bloody smears on the wall, for a start. This time, he felt as though he were one step closer to finding Jill.

He just hoped it wouldn't be too late to stop her from getting herself mixed up in something dangerous.

He'd only made it halfway along the new corridor when he heard gunfire.

_-__Too late...-_

The gun kept barking. Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe it was preparing for the worst, but he was sure it was a Beretta. And under that, muffled voices yelling things he couldn't make out. Someone was in trouble.

He rammed a door aside and darted into the next room. The noise grew louder. He was getting closer. But there was nothing here. No zombies. No dogs. No friends.

He kept moving, around the corner, to the next door. His boot found the space beneath the handle and wood splintered. But it stuck. He cursed and kicked it again. This time, the door flew open and banged hard against the wall.

Jill was lying in the middle of the corridor, at the foot of a short flight of steps. Her arms were wrapped around the bulk of a shotgun, half-hidden by her body. There wasn't any sign of what had knocked her down.

He slid onto his knees beside her and rolled her onto her back. His hand cushioned her head, letting it fall to the dusty boards with care. She tried to open her eyes. They were unfocused, like she was trying to look in two directions at once.

The bloody lump at her temple told him everything. She'd taken a fall, from the steps it looked like. It was a concussion. He was almost certain. He had to get her some place safe, give her the chance to shake it off.

But she needed more than just a chance to rest. She needed medical attention. Maybe he could find somewhere to leave her and then come back for her once Wesker's job was done.

"Hang in there, Jill," he said, starting to lift her up in his arms.

And that was when someone screamed.

He'd heard animals make that noise, ones caught in traps or wounded by predators. It was pain and fear, primal and unchecked. He remembered the family dog picking a fight with a fox one night when he was a kid. They'd both made noises like that, and in the morning his Pop hadn't let him out in the yard.

He'd never heard it from a human before.

"Richard," Jill grunted. She was half-conscious. Swimming in and out, it seemed.

Barry's eyes looked to the door at the top of the steps. Had she been talking about Richard Aiken? Bravo Team's comms guy? Was that _his_ scream he'd just heard?

He laid her down on her side, gentle as he could manage. She'd want him to be sure.

He took up Miranda. His boot made short work of another door. Beyond was an attic. Like the balcony, this place had been abandoned to disuse. Dust covered everything and cobwebs hung in thick clumps from the ceiling and beams. Huge funnels and fat globes filled the corners, protecting nests.

There were thick tracks running through the dust on the floor. Something had crushed a stack of wooden crates into splinters and strewn them across the room. Dark patches - he was pretty sure they were blood - were streaked and spattered on every surface. Here and there, he saw 12 gauge shell casings, the kind Jill's shotgun would have used.

_-__Or Richard's. He had one of those semi-automatics, just like Joe.-_

He didn't want to risk wandering into the deeper, darker recesses. Not when there was something in here that could make a man scream like that. "Richard! You in here!"

No one answered. But something moved above.

He looked up. There, hovering above him, was a reptilian snout about as big as he was. One slitted eye glared down at him. The other dribbled watery gore out of its socket. Its tongue flicked out in front of it, spattering him with saliva.

"Holy shit!"

He reeled away. The snake's mouth fell open. Fangs unfolded from inside, dripping venom.

How had he missed it? He'd been looking right at the thing. Maybe it was the way its lustreless scales hid within the mess of webs. Or maybe his eyesight just wasn't what it used to be. Either way, he could see it now, coiled around the beams above, as long as a train.

It hissed, threatening. He was in its territory and it wanted him out.

Wesker had said people might be affected. He hadn't mentioned giant snakes. It was like something out of one of those dumb B-movie creature features. The ones he and Sarah had laughed through at the drive-in all those years ago. Attack of the Thirty Foot Pythons from Mars.

But he wasn't laughing now.

What the hell else had the Captain been wrong about? Had he known _anything _about what was going on in that mansion?

"Richard! Hey, Richard! Where are you?"

No answer. No cry for help. No scream of pain. Not a grunt. Not a whisper. If Richard was in that attic, he was dead, or unconscious.

_-__Or lunch.-_

The snake hissed again. It reared back, like it was coiling to strike. He moved away, holding his hands out like a man at gunpoint. It was reflex. It wasn't like the thing understood. He only had one option. Get the hell out of the attic and hope the monster liked its dusty little corner too much to follow him.

Richard was gone. Jill wasn't. He had to get his head straight, focus on who he could save. Before he lost them too.

"Damn it," he growled, and then made his retreat, "damn it!"

He slammed the door shut behind him and listened. Another hiss. Muffled movement as the snake did _something_. He couldn't tell what. Then silence.

He let out a breath. Sweat was beading thick on his forehead. His hand came away dripping and he wiped it on his jacket. The mansion was a hothouse, amplifying the summer heat. Adrenaline didn't help, but at least the danger distracted him. Cold comfort.

Jill was still lying where he'd left her. Her back was pulsing in and out as she breathed, but each movement was sharp and shallow. Her arm was twisted around her torso, like she was gripping it. Maybe she'd bruised ribs when she fell.

He dropped down next to her and scooped her up a second time. "Don't worry, Jill. I've got you."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jill had done a pretty good job at clearing the halls. There were a couple of zombies lying dead, decapitated, as he followed her path back through the upper floor. All he had to do was step over them. Lucky. He didn't fancy his chances of fighting off an attack while carrying her and her gear.

It took him longer than he would have liked, but he found a bedroom a few corridors away from the attic. All of the other rooms were locked or filthy. This one looked lived in, but it was clean and had something for her to lie on that wasn't the floor.

He laid her down on the bed. That was when he noticed the red on her lower lip. He wiped the smear away on the back of his fingers.

Blood.

Was it internal bleeding? Was that why she'd been holding her chest? Suddenly, moving her didn't seem like such a good idea. What if he'd made it worse?

"Damn it, Jill. You gonna quit on me too?"

Wasn't this place a lab of some kind? Hadn't the people here been doctors before all _this_ happened? Even if there wasn't anyone left who could help her, maybe there were some supplies he could use.

He had to do _something_.

He brushed a few tangled tresses out of Jill's face. Her brow was pinched, her dreams troubled by pain or nightmares. Her arms were still wrapped around her chest. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it quick.

He propped the grenade launcher and the shotgun he'd found her carrying against a wooden chair by the door. It was a Remington. An old model, but maintained with love and respect. Well-oiled parts. Polished mahogany grips. Smooth action. Wherever she'd picked it up, it was a good find.

She had pretty good taste in firearms for someone of her age and gender.

The fairer sex didn't have much of an opinion on guns, in his experience. His wife hated them. Moira and Polly didn't care for them. But Jill had an eye for them. Discerning, like an old veteran.

He'd never met a woman quite like her before. She wasn't Sarah, but still, Chris was a lucky man.

_-__And you're selling them both out. Some friend you turned out to be.-_

He flinched. Right now, he didn't need that damning internal monologue storming through his head. Guilty sentiments wouldn't help Jill.

He wouldn't go far, in case she woke up. There was a door opposite the bedroom he wanted to search anyway. Maybe he'd find what he was looking for in there.

The door creaked on stiff hinges as he pushed it open. The smell hit him square in the nose. This time, he didn't stagger, didn't even falter. That stink saturated everything in this place.

Then he heard the noise. The scritch-scratch of a pen. He'd entered a study of some kind, and sitting at the desk was a figure who seemed to be writing.

Its clothing was dark with dirt and blood. Hair was sloughing off its scalp and slithering to the floor down its back in clumps, chunks of flesh still attached. Its fingers were clutching a fountain pen in a deathgrip, and its arm was moving in jerky spasms.

It turned to look at him, swivelling in its seat. The pen's nib ploughed a furrow in the paper. It moaned at him, its hand still twitching.

It was pathetic. Dangerous, but pathetic.

That suited him fine. He sighted along Miranda's barrel and put a .44 slug through its head. Its skull, with its mask of peeling skin stretched over it, blew apart, painting the wall red. Its chair rocked backwards, teetering on its wheels for a single, breathtaking moment, and then toppled over. The decapitated corpse crashed to the floor and lay still.

He breathed a sigh. They were easy enough to kill if you were expecting them. Once the initial shock of seeing a walking cadaver died down, it was just like fighting an ordinary man. A slower, dumber, dirtier man. A man that was trying to eat you.

He shuddered. Maybe that shock hadn't left him just yet.

If there were medical supplies in here, he couldn't see them. But then, he didn't know what he was looking for anyway. He'd been hoping for a satchel with a big, red cross on it, but he'd have been surprised if that was what he'd found.

All there seemed to be was books, weird diagrams, boards with dead insects tacked to them in rows, and an aquarium without any fish. He was about to give up when his eyes settled on the desk. He remembered what Wesker had said about sensitive documents. And about how they could be a threat to the lives of the other STARS.

He looked over the notes. There were textbooks, and sheets and sheets of indecipherable gibberish that looked like they'd been printed from a computer. The police department had started introducing those machines just as he'd been making plans to retire. He'd picked the right time to call it quits, it seemed.

Most of the pages were covered in ink from the zombie's incessant scribbling. It was even smeared across the wood. It was all just one line, a trail he followed back to the source, where the chaos turned to words.

The first page was pristine, devoid of the crazed spirals, loops and jerks that filled the rest. The handwriting seemed normal. The words too.

_Alma__,_

_I know you'll never read this. In fact, I know right now you don't even know anything's wrong. I know they'll have told you we're having communication problems here at the lab. You'll have believed them, because I never gave you any reason to think they were liars._

_I never told you about my work. I always said it was complicated. That I was changing the world for the better, and I acted like that was all you needed to know. I treated you like an idiot. And because you loved me, you let me. But even if you suspected, and I know you did, I don't think that even in your wildest dreams you could have imagined what I was really doing._

_The truth is, we were manufacturing viruses to be used as weapons. It feels insane to be writing that, but it's true. I know it wasn't right, not for the world, not for this country, but I thought I was doing what was right for us. Who cared if a few terrorists and dictators killed one another half a world away with what we created. So long as I could provide for you. I know you wouldn't have wanted it that way._

_That's why I lied to you all these years. I used to think I was protecting you. Now I realise I was protecting myself from life without you. I've been such a fool._

_We're all infected. Pretty soon I'll be a dead fool. There are men with guns on the perimeter, shooting down anyone who tries to leave. All we can do is let the virus run its course._

_Some of the others hatched a plan to escape the facility. I heard that bufoon Jensen talking about releasing his dogs to attack the guards. They don't seem to realise that it's not about us anymore. We're already beyond hope. We're protecting Raccoon City, and the world, now._

_The Guardhouse might have an outside line, but that place is probably just as dangerous as here. I should try to reach the lab. Maybe Fae managed to come up with a vaccine. Wouldn't count on it though._

_It doesn't really matter. I want to be with you. If I can't have that, any place is as good as another, no matter how comfortable._

_I know you'd be ashamed of me for what I've done all these years. Maybe you'd even hate me for lying to you. I hope I know you well enough to know you'd still hold me, and forgive me if I could make amends. I'm just sorry I'll never get that chance._

_Forgive me._

_I love you._

_I love you..._

And then, just that. Over and over, repeating. Covering the sheet. Covering all the sheets, until it descended into indecipherable insanity. I love you.

It was a punch to the gut. A reminder that the headless body on the floor had been a human being once. A man, like him, with regrets and guilt resting heavy on his shoulders. A man who loved a woman, who'd do anything for her, and who'd never be able to look her in the eye again.

Barry balled the letter in his fist. His eyes were stinging again. This was getting ridiculous. He blinked, trying to clear his vision and his head. But the question wouldn't be shaken.

_-__Sarah. Will you forgive me?-_

The door handle rattled. Adrenaline flushed through his system, cold needles prickling down his spine. He wheeled around, his aim centring on the room's only entrance as it creaked open. He stuffed the researcher's letter into his pocket and grabbed the gun with both hands.

A beret with a familiar logo appeared, borne up by a face he was only too happy to see. He sagged with relief, easing forward the hammer on his gun and letting Jill enter the room. She was carrying the shotgun. The grenade launcher was resting against her back on its strap.

Her movements were stiff, but aside from the golf ball of swelling just above her right eye, she didn't look any worse for wear.

"You scared the hell out of me, Jill," he said, "you okay?"

She nodded. "I feel like crap. I assume I have you to thank for putting me on that bed?"

"Yeah. Couldn't just leave you lying there. You were banged up pretty bad."

Another nod. She was disoriented, that much was obvious. Nothing left you rattled quite like a head injury. "What happened to Richard? There was this snake in the attic. Must have been twenty, thirty feet long..."

"I saw it," he said.

But he hesitated to tell her the rest. He couldn't count the number of times he'd had to do this during his career. Women who'd lost their husbands in the line of duty. Kids who'd lost their parents. Parents who'd lost their kids. It got easier once you knew the right words. Somehow, it mattered how you said it. It was the difference between sobs and screams, acceptance and anger.

He'd never tried to do it for a friend before.

"But I never saw Richard. I'm sorry, Jill. That _thing_ must have got him."

It wasn't easy to see the pain on her face. She'd liked Richard. Barry had liked him to. Unlike some of the other guys on the team, he'd been a consummate pro. He wouldn't have looked out of place as a part of the Chicago outfit. This mansion had cost another life, and a promising young career with it.

She reached behind her and patted the grenade launcher.

"And does this mean what I think it means?"

He'd have liked to deny it, say he'd never found that ravaged corpse on the balcony. At least, he'd have liked to give her a moment to recover before he presented her with more bad news. But it couldn't wait. "Forest too. Sorry."

Something inside him gave a bitter snort at the idea of him wanting to be honest with her.

Jill sighed. It was like watching her deflate. Her face lost some of its youth. The circles around her eyes seemed to darken, and the lines at their corners deepened. He saw a sliver of himself in that tired face."This is going to break Chris's heart," she muttered.

"Right now, I'm more worried about you," he said. She looked back up at him, confused. "You were spitting blood in your sleep. I think you might have some kind of internal injury."

She frowned, her fingertips brushing her lips. Then comprehension lit her features. "Bit through my tongue. Sorry for worrying you."

"Don't be. You think Chris'd be heartbroken about Forest? That's nothing compared to how he'd be if he lost you."

"Loving someone makes you vulnerable. I know that. I feel it too. If something happened to Chris... I don't know what I'd do."

It was odd to hear that from her. Not that she didn't make it obvious how much she cared for Chris, but it wasn't like her to be so grave. Maybe the horror of the situation was getting to her.

Still, she had it right. How easy had it been for Wesker to manipulate him by threatening Sarah and the kids? Half his age and already she understood.

She smiled. It caught him off guard.

"Guess you know about that already though, right? I mean, you've been married how long? Must be pretty weird hearing a kid like me trying to give you a life lecture."

He chuckled. "That your way of saying I'm an old man?"

"In a loving kind of way." Her face turned serious. She pointed at the chaos on the desk. "What's that?"

He looked back at it, then shrugged with as much nonchalance as he could manage. "Nothing much. Just some poor guy's last will and testament. Not too helpful to us."

Jill glanced at the body lying near his feet. It was strange how quick you became inured to the sight of a corpse. They'd been talking free and easy with it sitting just a few feet away, and hadn't even mentioned it until now.

_-Same as the smell, I guess.-_

She swept a hand through the papers. He was glad he'd had the wherewithal to stuff the letter in his pocket when he'd had the chance. Glad, and a little ashamed. "Maybe I was right," she muttered.

"About what?"

"About this being something biological. We were working the cult angle, remember? Small groups, possibly with dogs, cannibalistic, carrying trophies to explain the decayed tissue we found on the victims. I pitched to Wesker the idea that the decay was from the perpetrators, not trophies. Some kind of disease that causes necrosis and psychosis hand-in-hand."

"It'd explain the evidence, yeah. But not why the perps were never found. Crazy people aren't so good at evading detection."

"Crazy isn't the same as stupid. But you might be right. If these creatures are the perps we've been looking for, they wouldn't have been able to break into the victims houses and then escape unaided."

Barry nodded, but her train of thought was starting to make him sweat. She said unaided, like they might have had help getting away. Wesker hadn't mentioned Umbrella covering up evidence from the murders, but when he thought about it...

What other explanation was there? The zombies weren't smart enough to attack a residential area and then skulk back into the forest to hide. Not from what he'd seen so far at any rate.

Had the company spirited them away before handing the case over to the R.P.D? The murders themselves would have been too difficult to cover up. Whole families disappearing? Someone would notice.

But the killers vanishing? That was something they could engineer. And it would leave the case unsolvable.

The real question was how much of that did Jill suspect already?

"Wesker mentioned getting in touch with the C.D.C, seeing if they could sent someone to supervise the case. Don't know if he ever managed it."

She lifted a page of lopsided scrawl, smeared with blood and ink.

"If we are dealing with some kind of disease, we'd better hope so. We might all be infected already."

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N: I'm getting there, step-by-step. This chapter needed a complete second draft after the first didn't pass the Shak Approval Phase. This story's probably going to be about a dozen chapters long, ish. Depends on how many scenes I actually write. Writing on chapter 5 has begun already.**

**Critique here will be appreciated. I felt there were a couple of bits in this chapter that felt awkward. Please let me know what you think.**

**Hope everyone enjoys this and continues to follow Barry's (mis)adventures. Thanks go to CJJS for being a dedicated reader and reviewer, and for creating one hell of a story in "A Corrupted Summer". Highly recommended. Extra thanks go to him for helping me fix the stupid error message keeping me from updating.**


	5. Chapter 5: Buried

**Chapter Five: Buried**

It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened in the sitting room at the end of the corridor. If it had just been the glass everywhere and the broken furniture, he'd have said it was emotions bubbling over, or a disagreement between the miserable souls condemned to die there.

But the window had been smashed from the outside, and the floor was covered in black feathers. Black feathers and blood.

_So it isn't just the dogs. All the animals in and around this place have gone insane. God, if even one of those things make it back to Raccoon..._

He shuddered.

They already had. That was why they were here, both in the city and in the mansion. Even now, the escapees Umbrella hadn't caught might be staggering through the suburbs, looking for food they couldn't find in the isolated cabins on the outskirts. Their victims might be waking up, in their homes or in their lockers at the morgue.

That last thought drove the sick feeling deeper into his stomach.

If that happened, the R.P.D wouldn't be the first of line defence. They'd be first on the menu.

"Weird," Jill said. Her voice snapped him back to reality.

"What is?"

"No wood on this fire." She raked a hand through the ashes, long cold, and then glanced back at him. "Just paper. They were burning documents."

"You sure they weren't just cold?"

"There's plenty of wood," she said, nodding at the ruined furniture, "shame we didn't get here sooner. I'd have loved to see what was so important."

He nodded and hoped she couldn't see how glad he was she hadn't found anything. The letter was still burning a hole in his pocket, but so long as it stayed there, the only damage it could do was inside his own head.

Jill rose to her feet and walked to the room's second door.

He followed her through, hoping they weren't stepping into a gallery dedicated to Umbrella's sordid past. She was already suspicious. If they'd buried something here and she got even a hint of it, she'd dig until she found it. And then Wesker would kill her.

He couldn't buy her. Not the way he'd bought Barry.

He would have preferred to take the lead and check the place out before her, but the chivalrous routine would only work for so long. She had a hard head sometimes, and him pressing her to hang back would make her smell a rat all the quicker.

The next room _was_ a gallery. More paintings. More statues. More track-lighting. This was the second one he'd seen so far, and Jill had mentioned a third on the first floor. Whoever owned this place loved their fine art. He couldn't tell if it was motivated by taste or greed, but he was erring towards the latter.

"Somebody's trying a little too hard to convince themselves they've got class," Jill said.

He smirked. So she'd been thinking the same thing he had.

"Someone oughtta tell them it takes more than money. So what are we looking for?"

"These." Jill fished something out of her pocket and handed it to him.

It was a metal plate about the size of his palm, hexagonal, with an engraving of a stylised moon on the front. The copper put him in mind of a giant penny. It was tarnished dark, like it had been sitting amid the lint in the mansion's back pocket for years.

"I don't get it."

"You remember that back door I told you about?"

He nodded. She'd mentioned something about a puzzle lock. One that had made her skills with the lock pick useless. He guessed this was a piece of that puzzle.

"You only got one of these?"

"I found one before I found the door. In the gallery downstairs. That one I found in a room full of suits of armour."

"Armour?" He shook his head. Everything about this place was ridiculous. "God damn."

She smiled and finished perusing the artwork by the door.

He watched as she took what was no doubt a vase so expensive it could have paid off his mortgage and set it down on the floor. Then, she wrapped her arms around the stone pedestal it had been sitting on and started to drag it towards him.

What was that Chinese thing Sarah had told him about? Something about moving furniture to make a room more lucky?

"Feng shui?"

"Just hold the door," she grunted.

He did as she asked and let her slide the column into place in the doorway. For whatever reason, the doors in this building were sprung to swing closed.

"So far, I've had to deal with falling ceilings, electrified switches and vents pumping poisonous gas. This time, the door stays open. Just in case."

"Booby traps? That's a joke right?"

"It's probably _someone's _idea of a joke," she said, patting the top of her makeshift doorstop, "now help me look for those crests. I'm getting a good vibe from this place."

They separated amid the glass cases, keeping one another in sight as they moved through the room. It wasn't hard. Nothing here came up higher than Barry's waist.

The collection on display was an eclectic mishmash of artefacts from around the world. Rifles, including an early model Lee Enfield and a German Gewehr 98, opposed in the trenches during World War 1, now united on a common wooden mount. Tribal masks that looked like the papier mache Halloween masks Moira and Polly had made at school one year.

There was even a scale model of the mansion itself. The detail was stunning. It must have taken days to put together.

He looked over the miniature house for awhile. There was a card sitting in the flock grass at the front of the building. It said: "The Arklay Manor. Commissioned by Lord Ozwell Edwin Spencer. Designed by the late George Trevor."

He tried to find an exit other than the locked back door. But aside from the front entrance, there were no other ways in or out that he could see. And since the roof was fixed in place, he couldn't take a look inside the building either.

There was a brass plaque bolted to the wall opposite, nestled between two expensive-looking oil paintings. It was the most unexceptional thing in the entire room. So much so that it stuck out like a sore thumb.

**This gallery stands in tribute to George Trevor, builder of this house.**

**Loving father.**

**Devoted husband.**

**Dear friend.**

"Guess we know who to blame for this crazy place now."

"It's not the place that bothers me," Jill said, from somewhere in the corner, "I think I found something over here."

He saw her crouching down by one of the cabinets and felt a flash of fear. If she'd found one of the remaining crests then great, but what if she'd found something else? Something incriminating. He kept forgetting their aims weren't compatible.

He was quite happy to get the hell out of this mansion without finding a thing, but she was hungry for answers. That hunger would get her into trouble if he didn't keep an eye on her.

He swallowed his apprehension and walked over to where she was kneeling.

She had her hand pressed to the floor, fingers describing the gaps between the tiles.

He raised an eyebrow when she looked up at him.

"There's a draft here," she said.

"And?"

"And we're in the middle of the house. Air's getting in through the floor from below. It's hollow."

"Are you sure...?"

Her shotgun butt slamming into the floor cut him off. The tiles fractured. A couple more blows and they'd turned into a jumble of fragments on a background of bare boards. She started sweeping them out of the way, smashing any that stuck with the gun again. Pretty soon, she'd cleared a space about two feet square. All he could see was the wood beneath.

"Jill, I don't..."

She brought the shotgun down one last time. Wood splintered with a jarring crunch. Then she began to pry back the damaged boards.

She'd been right. There was a hole under the floor, one that dropped into darkness. God only knew how deep it went. She unfurled a sheet of paper from her hip pack and laid it out on the ground. It was a map of the mansion's ground floor.

"Where the hell did you find that?"

She smirked. "That'd be telling. Actually, it was just on a table in the smoking room where I found the shotgun. But as far as I can tell... This hole just falls into empty space between rooms. Pretty weird, right?"

"Right."

He watched as she peered into the black below, angling her flashlight left and right, trying to see what, if anything, lurked down there.

"I can see the bottom, but not much else. It's about ten feet deep." She clicked off the flashlight. "I'm going down to take a look."

"Now I know you're joking."

"Did I put on my clown makeup this morning by mistake?" she asked, standing up and uncoiling a length of rope that had been tied around her waist, "just hold this, okay? Trust me."

She slapped the end of the line into his hands and let the rest tumble away into the hole. She was going to do this. He could either help or get the hell out of the way.

"Okay, just gimme a sec," he said, wrapping the rope around his forearm and tightening his grip around it.

At a nod from him, she took it up, giving it a quick tug to check he had a hold on it. Then, she walked backwards into the hole.

It reminded him of the rappelling drills he used to lead when he'd been a Captain with SWAT. She was awkward with inexperience, but with a little practice, she could have been a pro. Even without, she seemed to understand the theory behind the actions.

He remembered Chris had picked it up pretty quick too.

She dropped out of sight. A few moments later, she touched the bottom and the line fell slack.

"Oh shit!" she yelled.

Cold fear prickled the back of his neck, but she answered before he could even ask what was wrong.

"There's a body down here. Looks like he's been dead awhile. A long while. He's practically a skeleton."

He could feel a rising urge to ask her if she was joking. Her tone was making it clear she wasn't.

"Any idea what killed him?"

"Does despair kill?" she asked, "he's curled up in a ball hugging his knees. God, Barry, he looks like he's been here for years."

_Years. Before any of this even started. What the hell happened in this place?_

"He got any ID on him?"

"Tailored suit. Expensive shoes. The owner, maybe?"

That wasn't likely. Wesker had said the mansion was owned by the chairman of Umbrella, and he was somewhere in Europe right now.

Then again, how had he acquired the mansion in the first place? Rich people tended to be a whole other level of crazy.

"There's a tombstone here," Jill said.

He balked.

"Dear George. Your trials are at an end. Rest now and live forever in our hearts. This inscription's downright sinister."

_George? As in Trevor? The architect? Did they bury him in the goddamn _walls_? Stall for time. Need to think._

"Anything else?"

No answer. He thought he could hear rustling. And then...

"Can't see anything," she said, "okay, I'm coming back up."

_Think fast, Barry. Is Wesker gonna be okay with her knowing this? And even if he is, you think you can keep her in the dark forever? Now or never. Time to take control of this._

His free hand dipped to his belt, sliding the hunting knife from its cover. He felt the rope pull tight in his hand as Jill started to make her way back up. He hesitated for a moment, and then cut the line.

He winced when he heard her hit the floor with a thud.

"You okay, Jill?"

She swore and blew out a heavy sigh. "Yeah, fine."

"Just a moment. I'll go look for another rope."

_And think about what the hell I'm going to do now._

"Take your time," she called after him, "I'm not going anywhere."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Wesker was emerging from the storeroom when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

Barry felt dread settle in the pit of his stomach like brick dust, weighing him down until his footsteps became a shuffle. Every time the Captain showed up, this mission got worse.

"I trust your search is going well," he said.

"Yeah, sure. I need a rope. Jill's stuck in a hole upstairs and I have to get her out."

He brushed past him and into the room. There was a lot of old junk there. A big wooden trunk with a heavy lid and an iron latch. A dusty old typewriter. Some cardboard boxes filled with bags of some kind of compost. There was even a busted old shotgun that made his inner gunsmith weep at its neglect. It pleaded with him to pick it up, to rescue it from its dismal fate, but the last thing he needed was to be carting broken weapons around.

"If Miss Valentine has been rendered inactive, it may be in our best interests to leave her that way. For the time being, at least."

Barry rounded on him. "You may not feel any loyalty to these people, but I do. I can't just leave her there. She's expecting me to go back for her."

"And you will. But only once our mission is complete."

He growled. "Wesker..."

But he was right.

If Jill stayed in that hole, she'd be safe, not only from the monsters, but from herself. It was best if she stayed there, much as he hated to admit it. And he did hate it.

"Care to explain to me why the architect of this place is bricked up in the walls?"

Wesker raised an eyebrow. It was the closest to surprise he seemed to come. "This building was constructed before my time. All the same, the organisation's protocol has remained largely the same. If he was deemed to be a threat to security, he would have been eliminated. I can only assume he was interred here for want of a better location."

"Like it did you any good. All those people you must have killed to protect your dirty little secrets and you couldn't even keep the lid on it yourselves."

"What you are seeing here is the worst case scenario, Barry. Umbrella's role in biological warfare is preventative, as an extension of the Department of Defence. Procedures were in place to avert an outbreak, not to contain it. That is why I am here, and why I have enlisted your assistance."

"Extorted is more like it. You honestly expect me to believe I'm betraying good people for some higher purpose?"

"You may choose to believe what you like. Ignoring Umbrella's research into combating biological terrorism, the economic impact of this incident, should it be discovered, could be devastating on a global scale."

"So we just ignore whatever companies like them do because it suits us? We just accept it, or turn a blind eye, or _help them _get away with it?"

"If we value the benefits that outweigh the costs, yes."

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

"Morality is not the only factor that needs to be considered. Your family, for example."

"Don't talk about them. Don't you _dare_ talk about my family."

He clawed at the back of his head, because it itched and he was frustrated. He couldn't think. The dilemma was swirling around in his head, uprooting thoughts and smashing them against the walls of his skull. Nothing seemed definite anymore.

What was right? What was wrong?

Was it right to let these bastards get away with this? Was it right to let thousands, maybe millions, of people lose their jobs, lose their livelihoods, lose the medicines and procedures that could save their lives, all for the sake of his clean conscience? Could he even afford to _have_ morals right now?

"Enough people have died today, Barry," Wesker said.

He frowned. That wasn't something he'd ever expected to hear the other man say.

"With your assistance, I can complete my mission. Our colleagues will never learn what really happened here, the evidence will be destroyed and the case will be closed. It will end with us. But only if I have your assistance."

He dropped his face into his hands. He wasn't sure how he was going to live with himself after this. But he couldn't see an alternative.

_Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Great choice._

He blew out a breath and lifted his head.

"What do you need me to do?"

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:**Critique appreciated, as always. I'll get writing the next chapter as quick as I can. Hope everyone enjoys this, and sorry about the wait.

Thanks to CJJS for tips to improve.


	6. Chapter 6: The Woman in the Well

**A/N:** I wasn't sure about this chapter at first, but it's actually turned out to be one of my favourites of this story. It started out like it was going to be a pain and then just hit a point where everything seemed to work. Hope everyone has been enjoying this so far, and I'm sorry for the lack of regularity on the updates. Thanks go to my beta, lover and muse, Shak. Also to CJJS, as usual, zackfair1991, Harteramo, and Kraut007 for supporting the story thus far. Another update for Damage following in a day or two.

Also, thanks to CJJS for tips to improve.

**Chapter Six: ****The Woman in the Well**

He checked the map again. The path he was on wasn't marked. He was guessing he was about halfway between the mansion's back door and the security checkpoint at the rear gate. Or maybe he'd missed it, and was wandering around Raccoon Forest. As he stumbled deeper into the darkness, it was growing harder and harder to keep track of his progress.

_Some __outdoorsman you turned out to be. Why don't you navigate by the stars? Check a tree for fungus?_

He sighed and itched at his beard, balling a fist around the paper in his hand. He'd made it out of the mansion, but nothing seemed to have improved. At first, he thought he'd been lucky to keep hold of the emblem needed to unlock the back door. Wesker had the second pair and it looked like they were home free.

Except that the Captain had other plans, other places he needed to investigate. And other puzzle pieces he needed to find to do it.

He'd sent Barry to search the checkpoint a way off from the mansion, while he roamed the grounds. According to him, the items he needed could have been anywhere, squirreled away by the research or security staff after the outbreak to protect the lab from intruders. If only they'd done the rest of their job so effectively.

He'd had misgivings about the plan from the start. Now he was wishing he'd grabbed the rope and gone back for Jill.

_No. She's safer where she is. Just wish I could say the same._

The moonlight was falling through the branches overhanging the path in sparse patches of silver. It turned the world pale, almost monochrome. He glanced up through a gap in the leaves and spied the moon hanging full in the colourless sky above. Somewhere, a dog howled.

He was getting that horror movie feeling again.

Something hissed in the darkness ahead, loud enough to be heard over the chorus of chirping crickets. His head snapped around, gun rising in his hands. A red eye winked back at him. Another hiss. He took a step back, hands clenching tighter on his revolver.

It winked again.

He edged forward, aiming his flashlight beam at the base of the tree where the light had appeared. There was something slumped amid the roots and fallen leaves. A body, wearing the shredded remains of a navy blue jacket. One of the company's security officers, maybe?

The corpse's legs had been stripped to bones. One of its arms was missing. Most of its face had been eaten away, tattered shreds of meat hanging around its exposed skull.

What had the researcher's letter said? Men with guns keeping them trapped inside? The others plotting to release the dogs?

"Bastards," he grunted, "not like it did them any good."

The radio strapped to the dead man's shoulder winked and burbled static. So that was all it was. He'd wound himself up tight for no reason.

_Still, better wound up tight and alive than relaxed and dead._

Something broke through the crackle of interference, a smoother, less artificial noise. A voice.

He snatched for the radio. His hand closed around saliva-slick plastic, pocked with bitemark craters. The dogs had bitten the damn thing. Probably screwed up all the circuitry in the process. And he didn't think he had a hope in hell of getting a signal with it now.

_Jill could make it work._

He sighed and put the thought out of his head. A twist of the dials didn't yield much of a result. Just a change in the pitch of the whining it was emitting. It occured to him that if he wasn't careful he'd summon the dogs, so he switched it off and slipped it into his pocket.

He was lucky it was still functioning at all, and he didn't want to run the battery flat before he could find a way to get it working again.

Through the tangle of nature ahead, he could see light, artificial and orange. And it looked like the path was heading that way anyway.

Was that the checkpoint? He'd been closer than he thought.

He followed the dirt track as it snaked over uneven ground, through overgrown shrubs and under dangling boughs. There was a familiar order to the way everything had been disturbed. This path had been the main thoroughfare through the tangle of trees, bushes and tall grass at the back of the mansion.

He wondered if maybe this had been a garden, before the place stopped being a summer home. If it had ever been a summer home.

He pulled back a curtain of leaves and got his first good look at the cabin. There was no sign of the perimeter fence Wesker had told him about. This couldn't be the checkpoint. And it looked too _rustic_ to be used for security. It was a ramshackle little hut made of a hodge-podge of lumber in varying sizes, colourations and shapes. It looked more like the treehouse he'd built Polly in the back yard a few summers back. Real amateur work.

There was a porchlight fixed to the awning above the front steps. Cables coiled around a beam and then snaked off through the undergrowth. Connecting it to the mansion, he guessed.

A collection of overgrown pot plants littered the porch, spilling out into conflict with the wild shrubs besieging their perch. Cobwebs hugged to the wood. More light shone from within, through gaps between the boards and a single window on the front wall. A dirty curtain, anchored in place by a dozen different webs, obscured his view inside.

He pushed open the door, wincing as its hinges creaked. He swung Miranda in a slow arc, taking in the interior at a glance.

In here, the disuse was less obvious. Shelves laden with books that weren't covered in dust. Corners that were spider-free. Rugs that were worn but clean. This place felt like one of those old shops that sold knicknacks only because the owner wanted money to buy more crap.

He'd bought Sarah's wedding ring from a place like this. She'd found the little silver band sitting in a box behind a stack of first editions and dragged him away from the war biographies to buy it for her. It had cost them five dollars.

But he'd have paid a whole lot more, if she'd asked.

_Sentimental old geezer, aren't you?_

He walked out of the little entrance hall he was standing in and into what looked like a living room. He was surprised to find a red brick chimney breast protruding from the wooden wall. The rest of the cabin seemed to have been built around it.

Except it wasn't a chimney. It looked more like a well descending into the ground, complete with a winch.

There was a bucket sitting beside it. Full of bones.

"What the hell? What _is_ this place?"

_Stop talking to yourself._

A door on the left led through a curtain into what looked like a bedroom. He glimpsed a bed and desk. But he was preoccupied by the shelves lining the back wall. They were filled with books, year numbers stamped across their spines starting from 1975 and ending with last year.

He took 1975 off its shelf and flipped it open.

_June 3rd._

_0900 Fed the subject._

_1230 Fed the subject._

_1700 Fed the subject._

_2200 Fed the subject._

_No further observations._

And that was it. Page after page of "no further observations". Sometimes a "subject seemed agitated" or a "subject acted aggressively". But days, weeks, months went by and nothing the "subject" did seemed worthy of comment.

He put the book back. A chill hit him hard in the spine. What the hell was he reading?

He picked up 1997, dreading what he'd find between the crumpled covers.

_Jan. 24th._

_Lisa woke me in the night. I think she must have been dreaming again. She'd calmed down by breakfast. The usual today. Mostly just scraps from the kennels. I'm still petitioning Fae for a more palatable diet for her, but without much luck._

_I threw in some potatoes from last night's dinner and she gobbled them up. It doesn't seem right to feed someone who can and will eat vegetables solely on raw meat._

_We finished "Pinnochio" last night, so I decided to start on "Alice in Wonderland" again today. She always seems to enjoy it, even if she's heard it a hundred times over the years. I'm glad, to be honest. It was Cathy's favourite too. I wonder where little sister is now. I wonder what she'd think of Lisa._

_She's been getting a lot of use out of those crayons I gave her. This morning she sent up an outline of her hand in the bucket. It was extraordinary. But her fingers. They're misshapen. Maybe even broken._

_I'd like to ask the staff medic to take a look at her, but I already know what they'll say. They just want her contained. They think she's a monster, some byproduct of the company's sordid past that they can't seem to get rid of._

_But she's smarter than they think. After everything she's been through, I think she understands. I think she could crawl up this shaft in a second if she wanted._

_I hope I can make life down there tolerable for her, at very least. Then maybe it'll never come to that._

Same handwriting. Different sentiment. Like reverse Stockholm Syndrome, the jailor developing feelings for his prisoner. The way he wrote about her, it was like she was his daughter. Or his kid sister. Maybe years in this cabin, doing this job, had driven him to adopt her in his head.

That still left the question: what _was_ Lisa?

Barry shot a wary glance at the hole.

And was "she" still down there?

Either way, the books weren't useful. They were just more evidence that needed to be destroyed. Wesker had sounded pretty certain that if they could reach the laboratory under the mansion, they'd be able to activate the failsafe and, in his words, "eliminate all potential threats to security" in one blow.

That sounded good to him. The sooner they wiped this place off the map, turned it into nothing but history and bad memories, the better. For him, his friends and his family. And probably for everyone else too.

He stepped into the bedroom, sweeping aside the curtain. The wall above the desk was plastered with crayon drawings.

Most of them were just arrays of smudges. Some looked like the stick figure drawings his own kids had produced before they'd been old enough for school. The kind you had to be real careful about identifying, in case you got it wrong and they got upset. One depicted a smiling stick at the top of a ledge, and another smiling stick in a dress at the bottom.

The handprint he'd read about was there. So was the word "Lisa" scribbled over and over on various sheets.

The desk itself had a journal, labelled 1998, and a stash of pens. There was a cluster of rocks too - smooth pebbles, shiny pebbles, pebbles with weird colours.

Gifts from Lisa?

And the bed. Someone was lying on the bed. The sheet was stained with dry blood. He held Miranda to the sleeper's head and took the corner of the cover. Then, he pulled it back.

A mangled head lay on the pillow, its face beaten to an unrecognisable pulp. He staggered away, slamming back into the desk, as a waft of rot hit him full in the nose. Pebbles dropped like heavy rain onto the floor. He'd gotten so used to the clean air outside the mansion that he'd almost forgotten how strong that stench could be.

Maybe Lisa hadn't been as friendly as the guy had made out. Except...

Except that the body was bitten. Right on the shoulder.

_Just like Forest. Infected by the virus. Already dead._

Was this a mercy killing he was looking at?

And the sheet? Preserving his dignity? The act of someone who'd cared for him or...?

He heard a noise outside the shack. A thump, followed by a scrape as something was dragged through the dirt. Chain links rattling. A deep, ragged groan. Sounded like a woman, too pained and emotional to be a zombie.

He waited, listening. It was a way off, somewhere amid the trees outside. What was it doing out there?

And then a scream. A girl's scream. Too high to be Jill. Too scared to be the creature named Lisa.

There was someone else out there with it.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Barry leapt from the porch and crashed into the treeline. A low branch stung him on the cheek. Another swiped at his knees. He kept his grip tight on Miranda and swung his flashlight across the undergrowth crowding around him.

"Anyone out here?" he yelled, "hey, can anyone hear me?"

Something moved to his right. He spun, moving his light and his revolver as one.

A face flew at him out of the darkness. A dozen faces, all attached to the same head.

He cried out. Two fists slammed into his stomach, driving the wind out of him and throwing him to the ground. His flashlight beam whipped about, throwing crazy shadows across the forest. Then it centred on the _thing_ standing over him.

Its back was hunched and bloated with what looked like tumours. The tattered remains of a filthy dress that might have been white once hung loose on its near-skeletal frame. Its wrists and ankles were swollen with sores from heavy, rust-clad shackles. And its head was bowed beneath a mask of what looked like human faces, rubbery, colourless skin pulled taut and grotesque around its skull. A red eye shone in the hollow of a screaming mouth.

"Oh, _Jesus!_"

It screamed. The noise was like metal on metal, sharp and strident. It made his ears ache.

The creature lifted its hands to its face, like it was trying to block out the light. Or maybe it was rearing back to smash him to pieces, just like the man in the cabin.

A Beretta fired somewhere in the darkness. Three shots. One burst on the monster's back in a spray of blood. It shrieked and wheeled around, like it had forgotten about him.

He didn't stop to think. He whipped Miranda up and pulled the trigger.

The .44 slug punched it between the shoulder blades and threw it down into the dirt. It didn't try to get up.

He scrambled to his feet, keeping the pistol trained on it.

"H-hello?" someone said, "a-are you okay?"

He stepped toward the voice, but didn't turn away from the prone body. Just in case. "Yeah, over here."

There was a rustle and then a figure pushed its way out of the trees. A girl - didn't seem right to call her a woman - with short hair and wearing the fatigues of a STARS officer. The white jacket meant she was the medic.

_The expert Wesker sent for? She's just a kid. What the hell were they thinking?_

"Rebecca Chambers, STARS Bravo Team," she said, with an enthusiastic salute, before glancing down at the creature, "i-is it...?"

"You should reload," he told her. She looked up at him, eyes wide, like he'd caught her shoplifting. "Your gun. Reload it whenever you get a chance. Don't walk around with a clip half-empty, or you might run out of bullets when you need it."

She nodded, first slow, then emphatic. She slipped the magazine from her Beretta and thumbed a couple of new bullets into the top. She was so clumsy that he was surprised when she didn't drop any. At least she knew _how_.

"Okay. Now keep your gun trained on her while I reload. I don't wanna take any chances."

She did as he asked. So even if she didn't have experience on her side, she followed orders and learned quick. That was good.

He'd never worked with a kid this young before. Maybe a few wet behind the ears recruits fresh out of the academy, but even the youngest had been older than this girl.

_First things first. Get to someplace safe. Then find out what she's doing out here._

"Okay, Rebecca. My name's Barry Burton, Alpha Team. I need you to come with me back to the mansion and..."

"What? No! I need to find Chris! I need to tell him about Richard."

"Hey, slow down there. We can figure this out when we're not out in the open like this, deal?"

She didn't answer. Not at first. She was too busy looking at the monster at her feet. "It's moving."

It was. Groaning as it pushed itself up.

_That thing took a .44 centre mass. It shouldn't have anything to groan_ with.

He grabbed the girl by the forearm. "Come on."

She followed without protest, letting herself be dragged back in the direction of the house. Or what he hoped was the direction of the house. Behind them, the creature was getting to its feet, grunting and breathing heavy like a wounded animal.

They needed to get out of there. Now. He'd seen that thing move and it wasn't any zombie. It'd catch up to them in a heartbeat if they let it.

He pushed aside branches and trampled shrubs. Rebecca trailed in his wake, doing her best to keep up.

He glimpsed a light through the trees. A string of lights, each a white beacon beckoning them through the wilderness. He put his head down and kept running.

They burst out of the forest onto the path he'd followed from the mansion. It wound away into the trees in both directions. He recognised the string of lights from the beginning of the trail. And, now they were out from under the canopy, he could see the building a few hundred metres away.

"Let's go," he said, releasing her arm and letting her go ahead.

Their order reversed, they hurried along the track and ducked into the storeroom at the mansion's rear.

Barry collapsed against the door, breathing hard. That was the second time he'd run like that tonight. It was playing havoc on the old ticker beating out a triple-time rhythm behind his ribs.

Rebecca sat down on a crate and adjusted the headband keeping her hair in place. Her arms were red with welts where they'd been stung by branches during the run through the woods.

"You okay?" he asked her.

"Yes, sir," she said, "are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine." He tapped his chest. "Just not as young as I used to be. You've got all that to look forward to."

"I hope so."

He couldn't help smiling at that. But then reality crashed down around him.

"You said something about finding Chris," he said, "you mean Chris Redfield, right?"

-x-x-x-x-x-


	7. Chapter 7: The B Team

**Chapter Seven: The B-Team**

"Richard's really dead?"

Rebecca nodded. "Yes, sir."

She was still calling him "sir", despite his insistence that she didn't have to.

"He survived the venom long enough to bleed out. There was nothing I could do."

He crushed his palms over his face. He'd already assumed that Richard was gone. Even so, this felt like a punch to the gut. Maybe if he'd killed the snake himself, or distracted it long enough, he wouldn't be hearing this frightened kid tell this story right now.

_He made it out of that attic after all. Across the roof, or..._

She looked up from fondling the Beretta lying in her lap.

"That's why I came looking for Chris. I... I tied off Richard's shoulder and packed the wound with gauze, but... It had severed so many vessels. There was so much _blood_. I thought after I administered the antivenom and the paralysis wore off he might be okay, but..."

She swallowed hard.

Again, he found himself thinking about how young she looked. Years older than his own kids, but still. Young was young. She didn't belong here.

_And she's been here for twenty-four hours already. No way she's been in the field before. Talk about a baptism by fire._

It had taken its toll. He could tell. Her shoulders were slouched. Her weapon discipline was sloppy. The naked bulb dangling from the ceiling threw off-white highlights across her face that deepened the bruise-black bags under her eyes. Her cheeks, her tactical vest, her arms - all were spattered with blood. Maybe Richard's blood

"I just didn't know what else to do."

"You did your best. That's all that matters. But you put yourself at risk by coming out here alone."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry." Her voice sounded tight. Overwrought. Like she was going to start crying.

_Please don't let her start crying. Sarah would know what to do, but me? I can build tree houses__ with the best of 'em, take 'em camping, but..._

He started to blow the dust off his old SWAT pep talks. But she wasn't a cop. If he told her she was the best the city's finest had to offer, or that she had one shot to make her daddy proud, she'd probably curl up in a ball right there and then.

_Gotta try _something_. Here goes._

"You acted on your initiative. A good cop follows orders, but a great cop follows his gut. You've got nothing to apologise for. But you're the medic. We need you. You're the most vital part of this operation. If one of us gets hurt, you can patch us back together again. What are we going to do if something happens to you?"

She chewed at her lower lip. "Captain Marini told me that if you want to take care of other people, first you have to take care of yourself."

"Yeah. Enrico's a good man. One of the best."

"He said I needed to learn how to use one of these," she said, tapping her pistol, "I'm kind of glad he insisted. I'd never even held a gun before last month."

"Rebecca, I've been in law enforcement thirty years. Hell, I retired two years ago. But there isn't a Captain on the force who wouldn't be impressed by you after tonight."

_Surprised too._

"I've had help. I haven't been alone since we crashed in the forest. Until Richard told me to wait in the infirmary while he looked for the others, I mean. He kept me safe. I ... wish I'd been able to return the favour."

"You said it yourself. There was nothing you could have done. God only knows what kind of snake that was."

"An elapid," she said, "Acanthophis, I think. It was hard to tell because of the size and discolouration and the fact that they're only found in Australia and New Guinea. We had to get Richard to the infirmary to treat his wound, so I didn't have time to study it after Chris killed it. We were lucky. The Acanthophis is an ambush predator. It's actually one of the only snakes in the world to act that way. If it had been a hunter then it might have gone into the forest, or even the city, looking for food..."

She was rambling again. Three decades had shown him a lot of ways for men and women to break down. This was the intellectual's way. Spewing thoughts and facts like a machinegun on full-auto, none of it relevant, all of it just to distract from the shock that was beginning to set in.

He'd seen guys with head injuries do the same thing dozens of times. They gibbered with a feverish energy, trying to convince him they were fine, all the while bleeding from the skull.

She looked up, saw him staring, and flushed.

"I share a lab with a herpetologist. An amateur herpetologist, at least. She's a big fan of the Acanthophis. There's a poster of it in her dorm room. I'm more a spider person myself, but..."

_Dorm room?_

"Rebecca, how old are you?"

She lapsed into silence. Then, she hazarded an answer. "Uhm, n-nineteen?"

"And you work for the CDC?"

She shook her head. "I'm studying at Raccoon U. My tutor said that it would help my application to join the CDC in Atlanta. I was supposed to consult with STARS while working on my thesis. That was what the Dean and the Chief of Police said. And then, last night..."

"So you haven't even finished college yet?"

"Next year." She looked past the gun resting in her lap to her sneakers. "If I survive this."

He hesitated.

_Poor kid. She's had a rough night. _Two _rough nights. Probably scared to death. I need to cut her some slack._

Hell, maybe this whole mess was all Wesker's fault anyway. Hire a kid to do a pro's job. Less chance someone might smell a rat. Anything to protect the company.

"We should get moving," he said, "no use sitting around here. We have to look for Chris, and maybe Captain Wesker while we're out there too."

She pushed herself up off her crate, readying her gun. She seemed game. So long as she was smart enough to stay behind him, they'd be just fine.

-x-x-x-x-x-

There were dead dogs strewn across the courtyard. A couple bore the puckered, penny-size entrance wounds of a 9mm. Most had been cut apart by buckshot, distended snouts ripped to shreds, front legs torn off at the joints, their insides piled around burst stomachs.

_Wesker's the 9mm. Headshots on the dogs blocking his way. Chris was probably the shotgun. He took out the rest. Looks like I owe you _and_ Jill now, old buddy._

Rebecca tugged at his jacket. "A-are they all...?"

"Yeah, looks like it," he said, edging into the moonlight, "keep your guard up. Don't talk. Listen."

She nodded, pursing her lips.

They marched, single-file, between the shot-riddled compost heaps dotting the yard. The flagstones had turned to islands separated by red rivers. Nothing moved.

"Sir..." Rebecca whispered.

He glanced back, saw her pointing, and followed the direction of her finger. There, perched atop the stone gazebo that dominated the courtyard's centre, was a cluster of silhouettes. Silver highlights fell on black feathers and long beaks and a dozen glittering eyes, all looking at them.

"_Haww!_"

Barry flinched. The first crow ducked its head under a wing and began to prune away loose tufts of plumage. The others jeered. They reminded him of a gang of teenagers heckling pedestrians at the roadside.

Except that a vision of blood and feathers on a sitting room floor crowded into his head and suddenly the teenagers were cold-blooded killers. And the heckling was a threat.

"Stay behind me," he hissed, and started to strafe towards an arched opening in the wall.

She did as he asked and kept quiet.

And then something screamed like a wounded animal at his hip. He recoiled, clamping a hand over his ear and keeping Miranda aimed at the birds with the other. Rebecca scrabbled at his belt, grabbing for the radio as it rasped out its discordant symphony of static.

"Turn it off."

"_...pha tea... Brav... eam... one read... ou guys... there?_"

"I can't. The dial isn't turning."

The crows started to stir, unfolding their wings, squawking in agitation.

"Damn it. Time to go. Move!"

He spun, pushing her ahead of him as they barelled into the narrow passage. Ivy dripping from the arches overhead swiped at his forehead. He glanced up and saw dark shapes wheeling against the sky through the tangle of vines.

"Keep moving!"

A deep rumble was rising beneath the scream of the crows, coming from straight ahead. It took him awhile to realise that it was rushing water, and by then they were bursting into the second courtyard.

Water was spilling in a torrent from a gateway set high in the wall, crashing down into a basin lined with cracked, stone flower pots. The plume of spray it kicked up filled the air with a mist that turned their clothing dark and heavy. It washed away the sweat and dirt sticking to his face. Rebecca skidded on slick cobbles and he grabbed her arm to keep her upright.

"Where do we go?" she asked, sweeping her sodden bangs out of her face.

He wished he knew. Black feathers were falling around them. They couldn't stay out in the open, and they couldn't go back. But beyond the wall, with its curled crown of barbed wire, he could see another building.

It wasn't like the mansion. No fancy architecture. No stone columns. No stone at all. It was just a wood cabin, like the lodge in the Rockies he rented most summers.

A couple more weeks, and that's where he'd have been - just him, Sarah and the kids - far away from this place.

"That way."

They shot across the courtyard towards the next ivy-strewn passage. Something hit him in the back as he passed under an archway, squawking and raking his vest with its talons. He swung around and caught it full on the side of the head with his elbow. The bird let out a confused cry and hit the wall.

He fumbled his way along the tunnel in darkness, following Rebecca's lead. He saw her silhouetted against lamplight coming from around the corner as she turned her head to look for him. Then, she was stumbling on, not stopping until she reached the building.

Two wooden steps led up to a metal door with a thin slot at about eye level. An electric lamp hung above the porch, a halogen bulb in a stainless steel cage. More pot plants spilled from their pots and mingled with the undergrowth climbing the cabin's walls.

The sound of the crows was already fading, but Rebecca wasn't slowing down. He could see her shaking as she pushed open the door and fell inside. He joined her and threw it shut.

For a moment, they mirrored one another, leaning against the walls with their hands on their knees, sucking in air as fast as their lungs would allow. He looked over at her, and she offered him a weak thumb's up.

She swallowed hard and then kept panting. "Don't think ... I'm ever ... going to get used to ... running for my life."

"Yeah," he breathed, "me either."

-x-x-x-x-x-

The storeroom off the cabin's entrance hall had rope. He cut himself a length about six metres long and then, taking a tip from Jill, tied it around his waist. Rebecca sat on a crate and watched.

"Did you...?"

She trailed off as he looked up at her. He'd been halfway through knotting the line at his midriff, and her voice had surprised him. She seemed to realise that and clammed up straight away.

"Did I what?"

"That voice, on the radio," she said, "did you recognise it?"

"Can't be sure, but... I think it was Brad. Vickers. Alpha Team's pilot."

"You mean, he's still out there?"

"He took off when we first set down in the forest. He's probably circling the area, looking for survivors."

He tied off the rope with a hard jerk. His jaw was tight. Was he angry? This was the first chance he'd had to think about it.

Vickers had left them stranded in the forest, with only the mansion as shelter. He knew that had been Wesker's plan all along, but the fact remained. That man was a coward. He'd abandoned them to save his own life.

_And if he had a wife and kid? If Wesker was holding them hostage? You'd forgive him then? Hypocrite._

"Do you think he might come back for us?" She was looking at him with her eyes wide and filled with desperate hope.

"Maybe, if we can get a signal out to him."

In truth, he'd expected Vickers to be back at the RPD by now, enduring a dressing down from Irons. But if he was still in the air nearby, he was their best chance for rescue. They just had to hope that his fuel didn't give out, and that his guilt kept him searching until they could get in contact.

He wondered how Brad figured into Wesker's plan. How had he been planning to get out of the mansion anyway?

"I suppose there's no way for us to fix that radio, is there?"

"I'm not too good with electronics," he said, "but Jill - I mean - Officer Valentine should be able to make it work."

_Just as soon as I get her out of that hole she's been stuck in for the last half hour._

She hopped off the crate as he walked to the door, taking up her position behind him without needing to be told. She nodded at him, ready, and he led the way back into the corridor.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The building smelled of damp and creaked like it was swaying in the wind. Only it was a still night. No wind to speak of. And so the constant groaning of the timbers put him on edge, like he was waiting for the place to tumble down around him.

The sooner they found Chris, the better.

There was a double door at the end of the hall. It looked important. The only other doors had been a plain single - the storeroom - and a locked door with a number on it.

He rushed into the room, letting Miranda lead the charge. Rebecca piled in after him.

They'd stepped into what had to be some kind of rec room. A counter filled the right wall. Behind it hung a cabinet bowing under the weight of its bottles, a chequered mosaic of warm amber and cool clear, all unlabelled. Discarded playing cards and beer bottles covered tabletops, ringing oil lamps that had burnt out a long time ago. To the left was a pool table and a pair of vintage pinball machines...

A hand latched around the harness strap at his lower back. He looked back at Rebecca and found her tugging at him, trying to retreat from the room.

Her gaze was fixed on something above him.

He looked up. A dozen eyes stared back at him. He saw a wide body covered in black and red bristles. Eight long, segmented legs. Fat mandibles peeling back from fangs.

And then he was in the corridor again, throwing the door shut.

He stared at it for a few moments, revolver raised, and then realised that his hands were shaking. "What the hell was that?"

"A Mexican Red-Knee," Rebecca said, trembling almost as much as he was, "it's a tarantula. Only... I've never seen one that _huge _before."

He took the info in, only half-listening. It had been a rhetorical question anyway. But, it didn't seem like the spider was following them. He sagged against the wall.

"Damn. Thought that thing was gonna bite me."

"Oh, they don't bite. Not often anyway. I mean, I might be wrong, because they aren't usually that big, but tarantulas have a _very_ weak venom. It barely serves as a defence mechanism. What you really need to watch out for is the hair."

More rambling. But even if he knew he should be keeping her in check, he couldn't help but ask. "Hair?"

"When they feel threatened, they scrape their back legs on their abdomen..."

She started to mime the motion with her hands, flicking her palms across her stomach. Her eyes were glowing with intellectual enthusiasm. The fear had taken a back seat. She was in the zone now.

Here he was clutching at his chest, and she was giving him an insect biology lesson. And enjoying it.

"...and release a cloud of hair. Usually it causes irritation, temporary blindness. At worst, respiratory distress, depending on allergies. They wouldn't even cause an abrasion on skin. But that one was so large. The hairs would be as long as your hand, and sharp as tacks. You'd be more at risk from severe punctures or penetration wounds."

She seemed to notice the horror on his face.

"But normally they're perfectly docile. I've never had any problems with Andrea. All of my friends say it's like feeling a newborn kitten walking on their hand. You just need to respect their boundaries and try not to spook them, and they're happy."

"Andrea?"

"My pet tarantula. She sleeps in a tank next to my bed."

He shook his head. "We're not going back in there."

"But what about Chris?"

"Chris knows how to clear a room. If those things are still alive, then he didn't go that way. Same with the dogs we saw outside."

"Right, and the zombies in the mansion too. That's how I made it to the back door okay."

"Exactly. So we move on. And we avoid those spiders if we see them."

"Okay, sounds good." She shot a glance at the doors, and he couldn't tell if it was fear or fascination in her eyes. "I've never seen one that big before. Do you think it behaves differently at that size? More aggressively, I mean."

He put his hand on her shoulder and turned her back to the corridor. "Let's not wait around to find out."

-x-x-x-x-x-

He snapped on the lights. The strip bulb overhead flickered on with a tinny plink and threw a haze of off-white fluorescence over what looked like a chemical laboratory. Jars were stacked by the dozen on the shelves and around the metal basin, most of which were filled with liquids he could only guess the purpose of.

Most importantly, there was a heavy, iron lock on the door.

"In here," he said, beckoning for Rebecca.

She looked up from the dust-covered museum piece she'd been examining, some kind of outdated machinery that had been turned into a part of the décor. It took her a few seconds to approve the room he'd found.

"Looks good."

"Think you'll be okay to wait here while I search this place for Chris?"

"Are you sure you want me to wait? I mean, wouldn't you prefer to have company?"

He smiled. She was young, and for the first time that wasn't a bad thing, because it made her earnest and ridiculously endearing. He hoped his own kids grew up to be like her.

_Maybe she'd like to earn a little money babysitting. Probably a good idea to get us both the hell out of here first though._

"Don't worry. I won't be going far."

She had already started looking over the chemicals. A few of them had the Umbrella logo stamped on their labels. But that didn't mean anything. Umbrella dealt in chemicals. That wasn't incriminating.

_God, I hope that isn't incriminating._

"Rebecca." She glanced over at him. "You were supposed to be the expert consulting with STARS on this case. What do you think happened here?"

She hesitated. "I-I really can't say. I've never even _heard_ of anything like this before."

"Right." He was relieved, not that he could let it show. Maybe the combination of her inexperience and Wesker's efficiency with the evidence would be the edge they needed to make it home. All of them.

"But if I had to guess, I'd say some kind of virus. Not an ordinary one either. Something artificial, maybe even designed. I'm not sure if we're seeing the results of an accidental spill or..." Her voice dropped low, like what she was about to say was near-unspeakable. "...something deliberate. Biological terrorism, maybe?"

Sweat broke, cold, on his back. "Virus?"

"It fits. Snakes and spiders aren't like human beings. We're practically a new species by comparison. A virus that affects us in one way could affect an older species in a completely different way. And in prehistoric times, both reptiles and arachnids were much, _much_ larger..."

She trailed off when she realised that she'd been rambling again.

He sighed. She'd figured it out. Just about all of it.

_He's gonna kill her. Wesker's gonna kill her._

"The good news is that if this virus was airborne before, it almost definitely _isn't_ now, sir. Even so, I don't think it's inert yet. We might still be able to contract it through blood or saliva or any number of other bodily fluids, so we should take care to avoid contact as much as..."

He cut her off. "You did a great job piecing this all together, Rebecca. I mean it."

"I've had a lot of time to think about it," she said, "I just... I wish I knew more about what happened here."

"We'll work it out. First order of business is to find Chris. Then we can start looking for the medals we need to get out of this place."

"Medals?" She dipped a hand into her satchel and pulled something out. It was a metal disc, about the size of her palm, cast in gold. There was an engraving of an eagle on it. "I found this in the library. I thought it looked important so I picked it up. I'd completely forgotten about it."

She pressed it into his hand, grinning. For a moment, all he could do was stare at her. Just like that, she'd brought this evening one step closer to its end.

He hesitated for a moment, and then ruffled her hair. It wasn't too professional, but she didn't seem to mind. "I'll be back, okay? You just wait here."

She saluted. "Yes, sir!"

He stepped out of the room and swung the door shut behind him. A moment later, he heard the bolt slide into place on the other side.

_Good girl._

He turned and saw, out of the corner of his eye, someone standing right behind him. He brought Miranda up, acting on reflex. A hand caught his wrist and twisted his arm away. He checked the impulse to squeeze the trigger. His stomach lurched when he realised who he was looking at.

"Hello, Barry," Wesker said.

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** This was a bit of a pain in the backside to write, but please let me know what you all think. I think we're at least halfway through this thing now, and I'm hoping it's been fun so far. New chapter to follow. Thanks as always to CJJS for his detailed reviews and continued patronage.


	8. Chapter 8: In The Web

**Chapter Eight: In The Web**

He didn't know where they were going, but Wesker was marching like he had a purpose. All Barry could do was try to keep up.

"I trust your search has been no more fruitful than my own."

He dipped his hand into his pocket. He didn't know whether he was expecting to feel pride presenting the medallion to Wesker. Here he was, one-upping the man holding his family to ransom. That should have counted for something.

Instead, there was only a bitter sense that it didn't matter what he did. Everything just helped Wesker move one step closer to his goal. If he stepped out of line, Wesker put him back in his place. If he put up a fight, Wesker punished him for it. And he did it without effort, without hesitation and without remorse.

It didn't matter what he did.

Wesker stopped and took the emblem. He examined it, weighed it in his palm, and then tucked it into his pocket. Just like that, it was as though the damn thing never existed.

"Just one more and we're home free, right?"

He made a noise that was frustratingly noncommittal and kept walking.

"Continue your search in the caverns below the courtyard. The waterfall barring the entrance has been drained. The second medallion should be there."

_Caverns? Oh yeah. Didn't this used to be a mining town, back in its heyday. Before the war and the depression. Before Umbrella._

They'd reached the door to the courtyard. Wesker pulled it open and ushered Barry out into the glare of the porchlight.

"What about you?"

"There are matters that require my attention. If his progress is left unchecked, I am certain that Chris will stumble over something that might endanger the operation."

"Chris is _here_?" Surprise gave way to suspicion. "What are you going to do, Wesker?"

"That's none of your concern. Rest assured I will do my best to guarantee that Chris reaches the lab unharmed."

Barry flipped the sentence around in his head, looking for some kind of deceit. Men like Wesker weren't the type to just lie. They enjoyed making out like they were being honest just so they could rub it in your face when they went back on their word later.

And Barry didn't want to find Chris dead, just because Wesker hadn't said "Simon says".

"What if it isn't there?" he asked.

"That would be unfortunate. For the sake of your family, we should both hope that it is."

-x-x-x-x-x-

He found the cavern exactly where Wesker said it would be. The waterfall was gone, reduced to a trickle, and the dark mouth yawned open before him. Echoes spilled out like guttural snorts from the belly of whatever beast it was he was about to walk into.

The thought of taking the first step inside was daunting, but Wesker had made it clear he didn't have a choice. The job was his. If he didn't get it done, there would be hell to pay.

"Come on, Barry. Quit wimping out. This isn't like you. You're made of sterner stuff than this."

But even with that gentle encouragement, he was still paralysed at the threshold.

On the bright side, the crows that had chased them earlier were gone. He wasn't going to be ripped to shreds just standing there.

He listened into the depths, trying to hear if there was anything waiting for him. Zombies, dogs, crows - it didn't matter. He didn't want to run into any of them again.

What he heard was worse than any of that. Someone screamed the scream of a wounded man.

"Oh, _hell_."

He threw himself at the tunnel entrance. Before he knew it, he'd reached the back of the stone mouth and was descending into the throat on a ladder bolted to the wall. He dropped the last couple of rungs and struck an uneasy landing on the rough floor. Miranda came up - his flashlight too - and then he was scanning the cave interior.

Wormeaten wooden beams sagged under the weight of rock and loam in countless tons. More cobwebs, hanging off every rocky outcropping, filling every nook and cranny. Old lamps hung suspended on vines of rubber-bound cables. Either time had snuffed them out one-by-one, or the generator they were connected to had shut down, killing them all at once.

Where had that voice come from? Had he been hearing things?

Another noise this time. A sussuration, like something dragging across rock. A low grumble in the bowels of this place.

He followed it deeper into the tunnel, hoping that it wasn't too late to find whoever had cried out. Unless his mind had been playing tricks on him, it sounded like Enrico. It was too old to be Chris, and Wesker was in the house back there. Not to mention that Rebecca had already confirmed Edward Dooley as K.I.A.

_Rebecca and Enrico. Last survivors of Bravo Team. Couldn't even save the goddamn Mountain Rescue guys we roped in to be their pilots. How did it even come to this?_

He couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like the web was growing more dense. The grey walls turned dirty white with them. He tried to ignore the lumps. Some were harder to look away from than others. They had shapes - muzzles and thin, muscular legs and stout bodies. Black blood oozed out through what looked like puncture marks. Puncture marks about as wide across as his palm.

His foot snagged on something lying across the passage. He staggered and realised with horror that he was going down. He landed hard on his elbow and knees, managing to keep his gun hand from hitting the floor.

He grunted and rolled over, expecting to see a fallen beam. Instead, he saw another shell of webbing, this one cracked open by his boot. A human face, pulled tight around its skull in a silent scream, stared back at him through empty eye sockets.

He scrambled backwards, flashlight beam dancing as he tried to move and hold his arm steady at the same time. Something brushed past him, prickling his shoulder with what felt like cactus spines.

"Shit!"

He flopped onto his back, aiming the light and revolver side-by-side. A furry leg, black save for the red bands around its many knees, vanished into the shadows. It was one of those spiders. The same ones he and Rebecca had seen above.

He pushed himself to his feet, sweeping the beam across the room. He'd moved from the passage into a cave. The web was even thicker here. More bodies, made anonymous by their cocoons, hung from the walls. Dark shapes moved around them, shying from the light.

He turned around and found himself staring into a dozen glittering eyes, the size of baseballs. The body they were attached to was as wide across and as tall as an RPD squad car, covered with thick, black bristles that looked sharp enough to impale.

Huge legs bore it forward as it reared up. Its mandibles slid back. Fangs emerged, dripping with venom, into the light - two wet spikes as long as his forearm and poised to sink into his flesh.

He fell back. The flashlight beam shook, throwing crazy strobe across the cavern and the monster at its centre. He kicked out and felt carapace splinter under his boot.

The spider lunged at him again. He kicked just in time to deflect a fang and push himself clear of the other. His heart lurched as it powered forward, rolling him over and leaving his torso exposed to a bite. He lifted Miranda, finger tightening on her trigger.

_You're too slow, old man. Here it comes. The end._

Except it didn't come. The revolver roared. A bullet burst a cluster of eyes. Watery gore, the colour of sewage, spewed across the cavern floor. The thing's legs quivered as it reared back, boxing the air with its mandibles as though it were trying to ward him off.

He forced himself to one knee, ignoring his body's protests, and fired off another shot. The spider lost a leg and limped into the corner of its lair, chittering.

The flashlight was lying at an angle, throwing its beam across the monster and onto the wall beside it. Something metal shone behind the webbing.

He didn't bother grabbing the light. He didn't want to disturb it in case he couldn't find it again.

His mind was working faster than his body could. It seemed to take an age to cross the cave, but he made it before the spider could turn to follow. He could see other shadows scuttling in the darkness, smaller but he was sure they were no less dangerous. Now wasn't the time to slow down.

He grabbed fistfuls of the web, wrenching it aside. It stretched like rubber, but wouldn't break. At least it gave him a chance to look at what lay behind and confirm his suspicions.

Twinned stainless steel nozzles. Two tanks coloured red and blue. About the size of any ordinary assault rifle. It was a flamethrower alright. An advanced, compact make. Umbrella spared no expense, although the question of why came to mind.

_Unless they always planned to be attacked by their own giant spiders._

He slipped his knife loose, started sawing at the web strung across its mount. This place was infested, crawling with those giant freaks. This was the equaliser. Better than a can of Raid.

Strands popped and snapped as the serrated edge ate through them. Pretty soon, he was able to pull away what remained with his hands. Then, he was at the flame thrower, scooping it out of its cradle and into his loving arms.

Something scrabbled across the rock behind him. He spun and planted his boot on its head, stopping it about a foot from his other calf. The spider shuddered. Its back legs moved toward its torso, poised to flick hairs, just like Rebecca had said.

Miranda was still in his hand. It put a hole the size of his foot through its back. Guts and bile tumbled out in a gory avalanche. It sagged, legs curling into its body.

Then, he brought the flame thrower around. Behind him, the jeep-sized spider, tiger-striped black and red, stood at the back of a platoon of smaller monsters.

His hand found the ignition. A spike of blue flame jutted from the lower nozzle. In the next second, the front runners were awash with fire.

It seared them apart, separating limbs from bodies, bursting eyes. They twitched and flicked in their death throes, loosing sprays of burning hair into the air. Most of it hit the walls. Some stung the others gathered behind them.

Those that remained backpedaled, shrinking away from him as he advanced. The heat of the burning fuel stung his face and hands, but he was old and hardened by years of struggle and toil. His skin had turned to leather years ago. He was well-protected.

He wasn't fighting for his life anymore. He was exterminating them. His Pop had always taught him never to kill more than he could eat, and never to waste life, no matter how insignificant it seemed. But this was different.

Because these things were abominations. They weren't natural. They'd _destroy_ nature. God only knew how much of Raccoon Forest had already suffered for them to be this big. He needed to wipe them out. He needed to fix the damage that Umbrella had done by even dreaming of them.

He fought them back into the corner, wiping them out one after another, until it was just him and the giant.

The image of the dead man, sucked dry and imprisoned in the walls, flashed into his mind. For a moment, he felt vengeful. He wanted to mete out retribution for what had been done to a member of his species by this ugly monster.

But the man had been Umbrella, most likely. No friend of his. And he wasn't going to make this thing suffer any more than it had to, no matter what it had done. He wasn't that kind of guy.

_It's just an animal. Animals can't be evil. But people... People can be plenty evil._

He pulled the trigger. Flame engulfed it from front to back. Its brittle shell blackened and cracked under the heat. Its innards boiled and evaporated. Egg sacs burst on its back and dozens of spiders - large as his hand, but tiny by comparison - tumbled to the floor, shrivelling to cinders.

He let go when there were only ashes left. Nothing moved, save flickering flames dancing on the mass grave he'd wrought.

The tanks weren't empty just yet. He slung the flame thrower. The night wasn't over, and there was no telling what he might need it for next.

-x-x-x-x-x-

He'd glimpsed it a few times since leaving the nest. Splashes of red glistening in the flashlight beam. Fresh blood in a trail leading away.

When he entered a tunnel section where the electric lamps were lit, he knew he was beginning to get closer to the lab. He could also see the crimson stain on the floor that much easier.

Even so, he would have walked right past the nook if he hadn't heard something grunt off the main tunnel. He doubled back and saw someone slumped against the wall at the end of the offshoot, hand clamped over a bloody wound in their thigh.

He recognised them a second later. "Enrico."

He hustled over to him and knelt down, putting a hand to his shoulder. His mouth was a hard line and his brow was slick with sweat. He was in a lot of pain, and it wasn't hard to see why.

The puncture went straight through the meat of his thigh and out the other side. He caught sight of swollen, off-colour veins bulging around the injury. It looked like he'd had a run in with the mother spider.

"You okay?"

Enrico grunted and tried a grin. It didn't work as well as he'd probably have liked. "Just dandy," he said, voice strained, "stupid. I've been so stupid. Made so many rookie mistakes. We walked right into their trap. My team's dead. I couldn't protect any of them. Couldn't even protect myself."

"Don't blame yourself, okay? There's nothing you could have done. Besides, they're not all dead. Rebecca's still alive."

"Rebecca." He let out a disbelieving snort. "God only knows how that girl survived in a place like this."

Barry nodded. "She's got a lot of guts, for a greenhorn. Listen, I'm pretty sure she can treat that wound. Come on, I'm taking you back to the surface."

He started to slip an arm under Enrico's, but he pushed him off.

"I can't go back. I've come this far. I've got to keep going. I've got to expose the truth."

"Truth? Enrico, you can barely stand."

He made another attempt at hoisting him to his feet, and received another shove for his trouble.

"I have to try. Or my team died for nothing. I can't..." He went quiet, breathing heavy. When he started speaking again, it was with a bitter note of self-loathing. "I couldn't live with myself if I let that happen."

Barry's teeth clenched. He'd finally found a living member of the old Bravo Team, someone he could save, the way he hadn't been able to save Joe, or Richard, or Forest. And now he was trying to get himself killed.

The lab was where this nightmare had started. It'd be crawling with monsters.

"You're not gonna last two minutes down there, damn it!"

He dragged the other man to his feet at last. And then he was slamming back into the wall.

Enrico was staring at him, eyes wide. "How do you know what's down there?"

His voice was trembling with what sounded like shock. The venom had shaken him up worse than Barry had thought. The old Enrico was gone. No more Captain. No more professional. This man was a nervous, paranoid wreck. A shadow of his former self.

And that made him dangerous.

"It's you, isn't it? You're their inside man." His face turned hard, the line of his mouth twisting into an ugly snarl. In the poor light, dishevelled and covered in blood, he looked like a madman. "You two-faced, double-crossing piece of...!"

His hand sank to his hip. Barry leapt at him, catching the Beretta by its barrel as it rose and twisting it away.

All he could focus on was the gun. He didn't even consider trying to reason with him until he started babbling.

"No! Enrico, you've got it wrong. It's not me. Please. Put it down. Don't do this."

His voice turned from reassurance to desperate pleading in a few seconds. Enrico wasn't listening. Every syllable out of his mouth just brought the gun closer to his head.

He growled. "God... Damn... Traitor..."

A shot rang out. Barry hit the floor. He waited for the pain. He waited for the rush of warm wetness across his torso as blood soaked his clothes.

Enrico slid down the wall, into the position where Barry had first found him. There was an entry wound at the dead centre of his forehead.

He turned and saw the shape standing at the entrance to the passage, gun raised, sunglasses tucked into its top pocket.

He leapt to his feet. "Goddamn it, Wesker! That wasn't necessary! For God's sakes!"

The other man advanced on him. With his eyes exposed, Barry could see them narrow and smoulder. It doused his anger and put him on the retreat.

His back hit the wall. Then, the barrel of Wesker's Beretta hit his chin, pushing his head up.

"It would behove you not to raise your voice to me, Barry," he said, his voice as cold as it ever was, but harder all of a sudden, "insubordination will not be tolerated, particularly from one in your precarious position. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal."

Wesker backed away. He ejected his clip and thumbed a spare round into the top. "Good. Have you found the second medallion?"

"No. Why would it be here anyway?"

"The process of elimination. These tunnels separate the laboratory from the rest of the compound. Here would seem the most likely location."

"If you say so."

Wesker ignored him. "We will be able to search this area more efficiently if we do so separately."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "We can't keep splitting up like this. You're gonna get one of us killed."

"We are running out of time," he said, his tone hardening again, "if this operation is ruled a failure, the company will not hesitate to tie up its loose ends. You are an asset, and your family are potential liabilities. It is in your own best interests to cooperate."

"Okay! Okay! Fine!" He let out a breath through clenched teeth. "We'll do it your way."

"Do not linger. I have dispatched Chris and the sole remaining member of Bravo Team to the mansion to search for Officer Valentine. We will have limited time to accomplish our objectives and assemble them for extraction."

With that, Wesker struck off down one of the two tunnels they were faced with. Barry watched him leave, and then turned back to Enrico. Two glassy eyes stared at him, accusing.

He knelt down and thumbed the slack lids closed. His heart was aching again. Another friend was dead. Another good man. Dead. Murdered. And his murderer was walking free.

_It should have been me. But I'm alive. Because I'm useful. Because I don't have the guts to stand up for what I'm supposed to believe in._

"Not like you did."

It wasn't much of a eulogy. But right now, it was the best he could manage. He had to find that medal.

"I'm sorry, Enrico," he said, rising to his feet, "I'm really sorry."

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** Yay, update! After my brief rut, I now think I'm well and truly back in the saddle. Updates for Bad Blood and Damage will be coming soon as well. I've been hitting Untold pretty hard in an attempt to get it finished. I think I'm getting close. I predict another four or five chapters. It depends, because sometimes I do have a habit of making mountains out of molehills.

Shak, once again, has been instrumental in providing a chapter of quality both for me to be proud of and for you to enjoy. She's always got my back and I am very appreciative to her for that. Also, gratitude to CJJS for following this story thus far.


	9. Chapter 9: Time to Explain

**Chapter Nine: ****Time to Explain**

_What the hell is this place?_

The passage gave way to an underground vault where the walls turned from rough to carved. Precision-crafted flagstones had been laid. In arched apertures, statues of angels wept and prayed into delicate hands. An iron chandelier, festooned with cobwebs, hung from the ceiling, but the light was provided by more electric lamps, these ones positioned in the corners. They threw long shadows across the ceiling, and it made him feel as though something huge and unspeakable were looming over him.

At the centre of the room stood a stone casket covered in dust. Someone was buried here, and with a good deal more respect than the architect, Trevor. He didn't get the chance to investigate. He could hear boots in the tunnel behind him.

Wesker.

"You find it yet?" he asked, without bothering to turn around.

"Find what?"

His eyes snapped wide. He reeled around, slumping backward against the coffin as recognition hit him like a slap in the face. He gaped, struggling for words, mouth working like he was a fish out of water.

"Jill? What are you doing here?"

She emerged into the tomb. The moment the light hit her face he could tell she wasn't happy. "I found my own way out of that hole," she said, "in case it wasn't obvious."

She pursed her lips. It looked like she was going to unload on him. She wouldn't have been completely out of line if she did. Somehow, she managed to keep her voice steady.

"Where the hell did you go, Barry?"

"I'm sorry, Jill. I just ... had a little trouble finding more rope, that's all."

She glanced at his waist. He realised he was wearing the rope he'd found in the second building around his stomach like a cumberbund. He could feel his face burning and hoped she couldn't see it in the bad light.

"I was trying to find my way back out of this cave. Guess I got a little lost."

She nodded, but he could tell she wasn't buying it. He'd been a cop long enough to know when someone was on their guard.

"So where are we? Underneath the mansion?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Maybe. It looks like some kind of tomb."

She stepped up beside him, examining the casket he'd been leaning against. She swept a layer of dust away. Beneath was the faint outline of a brass plaque, turned dull brown with time. This time, she brushed down the small square until it was legible.

"Jessica Trevor." She mused on the name for a moment. "That's the name of the architect's wife."

Barry blanched. "You're kidding? They killed him _and_ his family?"

She snorted, dry and humourless. "Killed him? They toyed with him. Let him wander around in that goddamned house until he curled up and died of starvation."

She threw something in his face, and he fumbled to take a hold of it. It was a black, leather pocketbook, cracked and stained with age. Its pages were warped, but the shaky handwriting was still legible. A pair of initials in gold leaf marked the corner: "GT".

He looked back at her, only to find her Beretta pointing at his head. Three decades on the force, and he'd never been on the wrong side of a police officer's gun before tonight. First Wesker, then Enrico, and now Jill. He'd never expected it to be any of them.

"I had a little time while you were gone to read up on Spencer and his company. It was a real education."

"I don't understand."

She growled. "Cut the crap, Barry. I know something's going on. I want answers. Now."

"Jill..."

He faltered, mind racing. What could he even say?

"Give me a break. I've been trying to keep everyone alive through this."

"Bravo Team is dead. Joseph's dead. I can't find Chris. And as far as I can tell, you left _me_ to die too. So great job, Barry. Really. Great work."

"Please, just hear me out..."

"No! Shut up. You don't get to ask me for _anything_. Where's Wesker?"

The question stunned him. "What?"

"Wesker. Where is he?" she asked again, "I found Enrico. He was head shot with a nine millimetre. I only know three people that could make a shot like that and still get the drop on a vet' like Enrico. Forest is dead. It sure as hell wasn't Chris. And the third is _him_."

"I don't know. We split up a while back. He could have found the other medal and entered the lab by now."

"Fat chance of that. I've got his medal right here."

She tapped her pocket.

He felt a swell of hope, and then deflated a moment later. He knew where the final piece was. He could get them into the lab. It would be the final hurdle. The finish line would be in sight.

But Jill had it, and she wasn't about to give it up.

Something howled from the tunnel ahead. The noise sent a chill rattling down his spine. He'd heard it before, by a little shack in the forest at the back of the mansion. Then, footsteps. Bare feet slapping on stone. The sound of chains dragging.

The tension between them evaporated. They were both looking at the archway.

It staggered through the opening, hunched and bedraggled, just like he remembered it from before.

"Lisa," he muttered.

"The Trevors' daughter was named Lisa."

_The father buried in the walls. The mother killed and entombed here. And the daughter kept for experimentation. God damn it, Wesker, this isn't what I signed up for._

His hand crept towards the flamethrower. Maybe a blast from it would stop her in her tracks. He was still reeling from the fact that Miranda hadn't ripped her apart. It just didn't seem possible. The .44 was king in the stopping power department. And she'd shrugged it off like a mosquito bite.

What the hell had Umbrella done to her?

"We can get past her," he said, keeping his voice low, "just lure her out of that doorway. I'll do the rest."

She growled. When she spoke again, it was through clenched teeth. "This had better not be a trick. I swear to God."

He didn't answer. His hand found the ignition. The flamethrower flickered into life. The monster's head snapped around, its eyes fixing on him. He could see the flame reflected in them through its mask of human skin.

Jill's gun barked.

Crimson puffs burst on Lisa's torso, spattering the stone with blood. She let out a shriek and shuffled forward, her body held in a hunch developed through decades in chains. Jill backed off, still firing, but she was coming at her too fast, lifting the shackle around her wrists like a bludgeon.

Barry waited just long enough to be sure that he wasn't going to hit Jill. Then he pulled the trigger. A burst of flame turned the tomb into a sauna, scorched the walls and enveloped Lisa in a fireball. She screamed, her body a silhouette writhing at the centre of its own personal pyre.

He saw Jill checking the breach on Forest's grenade launcher and backed up, knowing what was coming. The shell hit the girl full in the stomach and threw her back against the wall. It blew her out like a candle, leaving her a charred and blistered heap on the floor.

After years on the range and on the job, his hearing wasn't exactly stellar. The grenade going off in such close quarters probably wasn't going to help. His ears had that dull, muffled quality, nothing but a high-pitched ringing. Everything else sounded like it was coming through water.

"You okay?" he asked her.

"Fine," she said. She was yelling, but he could only just make it out.

He kept the flamethrower levelled at Lisa, wary in case she managed another miracle regeneration.

Jill set the launcher down on top of the stone casket. He didn't bother asking why. If she was dropping it then it was out of ammo. That was the only reason she would.

She kept her Beretta trained on Lisa as she crossed over to her. Maybe she'd picked up on how tense Barry seemed, even though she'd been blown up and burned to a crisp. Nothing seemed to die right here. Not the zombies, not the dogs, not this girl.

_Nothing except Enrico, and Joe, and Richard and Forest and Ken. Nothing except us._

She stooped, hesitating to check for a pulse. Lisa didn't seem to have any skin left. She was a mass of black, her tattered dress burnt off, her mask melted onto her head. A glassy eye, filmed with blood, was staring from beneath the fused flesh.

Reduced to charred skin and bones, he could see how misshapen she'd become. Her spine had an unnatural curve to it, accentuated by the tumourous hump growing from her back. Her limbs were thin and distended, so much longer than they should have been.

This had been done to her. She was like this, in body and mind, because of Umbrella. He felt ashamed, and for a moment it wasn't just for his part in it. He was ashamed of his species.

And then Jill was crying out as Lisa's hands snapped up, grabbing her by the wrists. Her Beretta flashed, 9mm bullets shattering the black shell. Blood gushed.

Barry checked his impulse to use the flamethrower. No way he could get a clean shot. He drew Miranda and grabbed Jill by the shoulder, pulling her back.

Lisa let out a gurgling shriek, her mouth opening on a river of red that spewed down her chest. A .44 shot to the head knocked her flat. Her fingers uncurled from Jill's arms and she jumped back, swearing.

It took him a moment to see the pink skin on her forearms, the blisters rising on her wrists.

"Shit, shit, shit," she spat, fumbling off her watch and throwing it to the floor.

He was about to ask her if she was okay when something shoved him off his feet. The flamethrower hit the floor and skidded across the mausoleum. He rolled, the world spinning. He heard Jill go down a moment later.

When he sat up, he saw Lisa slumped over the casket at the centre of her room. Her hands traced the surface of the lid. She was trembling. It looked almost like she was crying.

He shot a look at Jill. She was watching the scene too. He saw her hand moving, gesturing to the coffin. She glanced askance at him, checking to see that he'd understood the message.

She pushed herself up, slowly. Lisa didn't seem to notice. He followed her as she stepped forward, easing her foot down as softly as she could.

"What are you doing?" he hissed.

"Look at the casket. It doesn't look like it's been touched in years. Maybe she's been looking for it."

He nodded. That made a sort of sense. Why else would she be clinging to that thing?

And why else would she have survived so long? The virus sustained her, but for what? Why wouldn't she just curl up and wait to die? Maybe it was hope that was keeping her going. Hope that she would see her mother again.

Jill wrapped her hands around the casket's near corner and started to push. Lisa didn't move. Barry took the other side. It was heavy, but then, he wouldn't have expected a slab that size to be a featherweight.

_Oh, Christ, what am I doing? That thing'll kill us both if it gets a chance._

The lid fell away and a gasp of long-dead air rushed out. It hit him full in the face, but the stench of burnt flesh had already inured him. Even so, he reeled back, hand crushed over his nose and mouth. Jill did the same.

Lisa leaned into the open coffin. She placed her shackled hands on its rim and peered at the skeletal corpse, in its ragged lilac dress, lying within. She reached in, gnarled fingers twitching, and clasped the dead woman's folded hands.

And then she collapsed, sobbing, to her knees. She dropped out of sight, and all Barry could do was listen, hand tight around Miranda's grip, as she cried. She didn't sound like a human anymore. Instead, she sounded like a tortured animal.

They stood in silence until the girl stopped crying. Her sobs turned to whispers and then, at last, nothing. For a moment, the room was still.

Jill was first to move. She circled the casket and knelt down where Lisa should have been. Barry followed her, aiming his revolver at the girl, lying very still, beside her. Jill's hand was on her neck.

"Dead," she said, "looks like she just ... gave up the ghost. Nothing left for her."

He hesitated, then lowered the gun.

She let out a sigh and looked up at him.

"Barry, what's really going on? You need to tell me. I can help you. Please."

"I need that medal," he said, "Wesker can use it to get us into the lab. From there we can call Brad. He's still circling the area, but he won't wait for us all night. Please, it's our last shot to get out of here. All of us."

He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her about Umbrella. About Wesker being a spy. About the virus and the zombies and the monsters that the company had created. And about his family.

He couldn't get the words out. Somehow, if he could just keep the whole truth from her, he could protect her. Wesker wouldn't kill her if all she knew was pieces of the whole. He had to hang onto that. There had to be a way for them all to get out alive.

She shook her head sadly, then motioned him to the tomb's exit. "You first. Go."

"Jill, I..."

Her eyes narrowed. "Just go."

-x-x-x-x-x-

He didn't know what to say to her. She hadn't said a word since they'd left the mausoleum. The silence hung heavy over them both.

He picked their path with guesswork, hoping she wasn't expecting him to know the way. He was probably as clueless as she was. Still, as far as he could tell, they weren't going around in circles.

He reached his limit after maybe ten minutes. The pregnant quiet was making his head pound, nothing but the sound of her footsteps drumming in military rhythm behind him. He had to say something.

He turned back to look at her, mouth open, ready to blurt the first thing that came out. Probably an apology.

He saw Jill. And behind her he saw Wesker, slipping out of the shadows.

"Jill!"

Wesker's arm locked under her jaw, pulling tight around her neck. Her breath caught in her throat, her lips parting around a grimace.

Barry ducked as her Beretta made an erratic jerk in his direction. Wesker's hand was on her wrist, fingertips gouging at tendons. Another shake, and the gun clattered to the floor. He kicked it away, sending it spinning into the darkness. Her face started to colour, a deepening flush appearing on her cheeks.

She jammed her elbow into his solar plexus, twisting out of his hold and rounding on him. If she was surprised to see who was attacking her, she didn't let on. His fist grazed her jaw as she turned her head away. She drove her heel into his knee, staggering him, and then slammed her palm into his cheek.

She swung a hook and he ducked. He was faster than Barry had given him credit for being. He caught her under the arms and powered her backward into the wall. Her spine struck the rock. Then her knee rose into his chest, knocking him away.

He came at her again, hands aimed at her throat. She caught him at the elbows, but there was no way she could beat him head-on. As good as she was, Wesker was almost twice her size. In a contest of strength alone, he'd rip her apart.

She dropped back, and for a moment Barry thought Wesker had overpowered her. Then he saw her foot rising, jamming into his stomach as she threw him over her head.

He rolled into a crouch. Barry saw a flash of silver in the light from one of the lamps. Wesker's combat knife was in his hand before he even found his feet again. He glanced over at Jill and saw her pushing herself to her feet, sliding her tazer from her hip pouch.

She hadn't noticed the blade. She was going to walk right into it.

_Sorry, Jill._

He did the only thing he could think of. He waited until she strode past and then brought Miranda down on the back of her head.

She hit the floor, chocolate tresses spilling from her beret as it rolled into a puddle.

His eyes locked with Wesker's.

He slid the knife back into it's sheathe and then kneeled down to rifle through Jill's pockets. He found the medal and slid it into his own pouch.

"Did you intend to shoot me, Barry?" he asked, without looking up.

It took him a moment to realise that he was still holding his revolver. It was pointing right at the top of Wesker's head.

"I was thinking about it."

Wesker stood, straightening his uniform. "Then I suggest you reconsider.

He started to walk away.

"Bring Officer Valentine with you."

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** Grateful tidings to Zephyr12343 and to the nameless anonymous reviewer for giving Barry the love he deserves. And, as usual, I would like to heap praise on my beloved Shak for having done my beta.


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